“Wedding. Mom’s wedding. Riverside. Shit!” I panted, trying to get the Purple People Eater closed in the back.
Ramirez stood up and helped me with the zipper.
“Thanks.”
“How late are you?” he asked, still rubbing his eyes.
“Late. Riverside in half an hour late. I am so freaking late!” I looked wildly around for my dyed purple shoes. I found one under my drawing table and hopped around looking for the other as I scooped my cell phone back into my purse.
“Okay, I’ll drive.”
I stopped hopping and stared.
Okay – my first thought when Mom told me she was getting married (after the initial shock that Ralph was, in fact, straight) was of the awesome act of God it would take to get Richard to come to the wedding with me. We’d only been dating four months and the Wedding Date is really more of a six months-and-up kind of event. Rating just after meet-the-parents, and just before buying a puppy together. After weeks of procrastinating, and weeks more of begging, pleading and playing the we’re-not-having-sex-until-you-relent game, I’d finally convinced Richard to go on the promise he could leave early if they started doing the chicken dance.
And, after one drunken night of Maddie the Horny Tear Factory, Ramirez wanted to go to the wedding with me?
I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because Ramirez grinned as he explained.
“My car has a siren. We’ll be able to get through traffic.”
Right. Siren. Duh.
I shook off the tiny prickle of disappointment that he wanted a quick route and not an evening of close dancing with me as I found my other shoe and made a mad dash for Ramirez’s SUV.
Usually the drive from Santa Monica to Riverside is a good hour and a half – Santa Monica bordering the ocean and Riverside bordering the last known outpost of civilization before heading into the desert of doublewides between L.A. and Las Vegas. However, with Ramirez’s police siren blaring down the 10, we made it in twenty-five. It was a good thing too because as we pulled up in front of the Garden Grande Motel, Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt were pacing up and down like two vintage kitchy Energizer bunnies.
“Where the hell have you been?” Mom shrieked at me as I catapulted myself from the car.
“Sorry, I overslept.”
Mrs. Rosenblatt looked Ramirez up and down. Her gaze settled in his package region. “I can see why.”
My cheeks turned into two flaming pools of lava.
Ramirez just grinned.
“You, come with me,” Mrs. Rosenblatt instructed him. “I’ve got the perfect seat for you.” Before I could protest she grabbed Ramirez by the arm and steered him toward the back garden.
“No he’s just dropping me off, and…” I trailed off. What was the point? Mrs. Rosenblatt would probably just lecture me on the importance of sex for a healthy aura.
Ramirez just shrugged and grinned at me over his shoulder as Mrs. Rosenblatt led him away. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was enjoying this.
“Where is Richard?” Mom looked from me to Ramirez’s retreating form with narrowed eyes.
“Uh, well, Richard is kind of, um…”
Mom waved her hands in the air. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You’re here. I’m getting married. That’s all that matters.”
Mom’s hands stopped waving. Her eyes got round. She visibly paled under her thick layer of foundation and startling blue eyeliner. “Oh God. I’m getting married.”
And then my mother began to hyperventilate. Right there on the sidewalk in front of the Garden Grande Motel in an empire waisted wedding dress with a two foot long train Mom had the breakdown to end all breakdowns.
“Oh God. I don’t think I can do this, Maddie. I mean, I want this,” she went on, “But oh my God, I’m getting married, and I swore I would never do this again, and maybe we should wait, maybe we should do it in the church after all, what if God really does want me to be Catholic, and what if he puts a curse upon our marriage, Maddie, you know I can’t take another failed marriage, I need God to be on my side, Mads.”
My head pounded, the marching band bringing out the big cymbals. “Take a breath. Pause for a period.”
Mom took another deep breath, still looking like she needed a paper bag. “What am I going to do if I blow this marriage too? I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Mom, if you don’t want to do this, now’s the time.”
Am I a bad person that I almost hoped she’d change her mind and I could go home and commune with my Mr. Coffee instead of parading down the aisle in Barney on Crack for all to see?
She bit her lip, creating little red lipstick flecks on her teeth.
“I do Mads. But, it’s just been the two of us for so long. And, well, Ralph’s great, but everything’s about to change. And I don’t know if I can take it. The change. Maybe I’m just too old for change.”
And I realized as I stared at my mother’s ‘80’s blue eyeshadow and lipstick stained teeth, so was I. Maybe that was why I’d blocked out all things wedding for the past three months. I was afraid things were going to change. That I’d lose my keds-with-floral-Mumus Mom to Fernando’s ultra chic world.
And just as quickly I realized how ridiculous that was. There wasn’t a designer in Beverly Hills strong enough to pry my mom out of her 1983 ways, and to be honest, I didn’t think Ralph even wanted to try. Any man who would love Mom, blue eye-shadow and all, passed muster with me.
I wasn’t losing a mom. I was gaining a dad. A Faux Dad.
“Mom, do you love Ralph?”
Mom nodded without hesitation. “I do.”
I gave her arm a quick squeeze. “Then let’s go get married.”
Mom’s eyes teared up and she caught me in a hug that crushed my ribs even harder than the Purple People Eater. I held onto her hand as we took our places behind a boxwood hedge just as the strains of the wedding march began to play.
Chapter Fifteen
“Everybody on the dance floor for the chicken dance!”
Ramirez leaned in close. “Just so you know, this more than makes up for dinner at my mom’s.”
No kidding.
Actually Ramirez had been a pretty good sport about this whole thing, sitting all the way through the ceremony, even when my Irish Catholic Grandmother started saying her rosary halfway through the I-do’s, and even when every one of my cousins, aunts, uncles, and members of my mother’s Internet chat groups insisted on meeting Maddie’s New Guy. All things considered, Bad Cop was turning out to be an okay date.
We were seated at one of the ten round tables in the Garden Grande’s “great hall” (think Elk’s lodge décor – peeling wood toned vinyl walls and grade school cafeteria linoleum). Molly the Breeder sat across from me with her husband, Stan. Dana and an exhausted looking No Neck Guy were flapping their wings on the dance floor, and Ramirez was sitting on my left. Beside him sat my Irish Catholic Grandmother, back straight, lips pinched into a tight line, eyes narrow and shrewd, flicking between Ramirez’s tell-tale stubble and my naked left finger.
“Maddison, are you going to mass tomorrow morning?” she asked, her steely blue eyes squinting up at me. (Despite my petite status, my grandmother makes me look like a giant, topping out at just under 4’11”.)
“Of course, Grandmother.” I figured this didn’t really count as a lie because it was for a good cause. If my grandmother thought I didn’t go to mass, she might have a heart attack and die here on the spot. So, really, I was saving her life with this lie. Very noble, when you look at it that way.
“How about the new guy?” She gestured to Ramirez as if he weren’t there. “Does he go to mass?”
“Uh…” I was stumped.
“My family goes to St. John Vianney,” Ramirez cut in.
He was Catholic? Ohmigod. I think my grandmother might just die a happy woman. Maddie had actually brought home a good Catholic boy. Well, a Catholic boy at any rate. The jury was still out on the good part.