Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (22 page)

“No,” I say, sitting up. “About us. He can never know about us.”

Chaz’s tone doesn’t change. “You’re going to marry Luke and keep me around as a boy toy? How twenty-first century of you.”

“I… I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say. “How can I… I mean, he loves me.”

Chaz taps the menu. “Lizzie. Let’s just order. We don’t have to figure it all out tonight. And they stop serving at eleven.”

I chew my lower lip. “I just,” I say. “I… I’m not very good at this. At being… bad.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chaz says with a grin. “I think you did an exemplary job of it earlier.”

I lift up one of the flat, uncomfortable Knight’s Inn pillows and smack him with it. He laughs and tugs it away from me, then wrestles me back down to the mattress.

We barely order our nachos in time to make the eleven o’clock cutoff.

“Where were you last night?” Sarah wants to know when I come tromping into the house the next morning.

“And aren’t those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?” Rose asks cattily.

Their eyes light up a second later, however, when Chaz follows me through the screen door.

“Chaz!” my mom cries, looking genuinely delighted. “What a surprise!”

“I’ll say.” Rose shoots me a look so laser sharp, it might have melted steel. “When did you get into town, Chaz? Don’t tell us… last night?”

“How sweet of you to come,” Mom says, going to give Chaz a hug. Having dated Shari for so long, he’s an old family favorite. Well, with my parents. My sisters don’t play favorites. Except among their kids.

“Of course I came,” Chaz says as my mom releases him and my dad wanders in from the den, his reading glasses perched on top of his head and the newspaper dangling from his fingers. “I was a big fan of Mrs. Nichols.”

“Well, my mother was something of a character,” Dad says, shaking Chaz’s hand. “Good to see you.”

Rose and Sarah, meanwhile, are taking in the beard burn that no amount of foundation on my part has so far been able to cover up. Chaz’s five o’clock shadow starts growing at approximately ten in the morning, and any kissing after that takes its toll. Conscious of their scandalized yet delighted gazes, I check out the new offerings—a pie from one of the neighbors, a floral arrangement from Gran’s dentist—while Chaz accepts Mom’s offer of coffee and a piece of the coffee cake the Huffmans brought over.

As soon as they’re out of earshot Rose takes two quick steps toward me and hisses, “Sssssslut,” in my ear while giving me a quick pinch on the butt as she heads into the kitchen to refill her own coffee mug. I let out a yelp—she always gives the most painful pinches.

Then Sarah moves in to whisper, “I always did think he was cute. You know, not, like, traditionally cute, but tall, at least. A little too hairy for me, though. But isn’t he still in school? Does he not have a job? How’s he going to support you without a job? Are you going to have to support him? I’m all for being a feminist, but not that feminist. Look what happened to Rose.”

My eyes are still filled with tears from Rose’s pinch. I have to sit down because I can’t see to navigate the living room furniture, which my mother has rearranged to make space for all the floral arrangements that have been arriving. The next thing I know, a sheet of paper is thrust into my hands.

“Here,” a child’s voice says.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“It’s my newspaper.” When my vision clears a little, I see that my niece Maggie is standing in front of me. “That will be one dime, please.”

I reach into my pocket, find some change, and give Maggie a dime. She walks away without saying thank you.

I look down at the sheet of paper. It is printed in sixteen-point type and arranged to look like the front page of an actual newspaper. She’s clearly had someone’s help with it, since, being in the first grade, she’d only just learned to read and write. The headline, which is in twenty-six point, screams, “GRANDMA NICHOLS DIES!!!!”

Below that, the article goes on to describe Gran’s death in grisly detail, with a line about how Elizabeth Nichols is quoted as being “very sad.”

“Now, Lizzie,” Mom says, coming out of the kitchen with Chaz in tow, holding a steaming mug of coffee and a plate of coffee cake. “I wanted to let you know, we’ve selected a reading for you to do at the service this afternoon.”

“A reading?” I look up from the paper. “What kind of reading?”

“Just a passage from the Bible that Father Jim picked out,” Mom goes on as Rose drifts out from the kitchen and takes a seat by the piano. “I’ll get you a copy so you can practice. Each of you girls is doing one.”

“Gran never read the Bible,” I say, “in her life.”

“Well, you can’t have a funeral without Bible readings,” Sarah says.

“And these are very tasteful Bible passages, honey,” Mom says. “Don’t worry.”

“Tasteful Bible passages,” Chaz says, putting his plate of coffee cake down on a side table. When Mom looks at him, he grins and raises his mug of coffee toward her in a salute. “Great coffee, Mrs. Nichols!”

Mom smiles. “Why, thank you, Chaz.”

I’m too miserable to smile. “Mom,” I say. “This funeral… it’s like it doesn’t even have anything to do with Gran. We should be having a celebration of her life. The things in it should represent things she really loved.”

“Like what?” Mom asks with a tiny snort. “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and beer?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lizzie,” Rose says. She shoots a look at the kitchen door, through which my dad hasn’t reappeared, apparently still being busy getting his own coffee and cake to go with it. She drops her voice to a whisper as she hisses, “Grandma embarrassed us enough while she was alive. Let’s not have her embarrass us in death too.”

I widen my eyes and swing my head around to look at Chaz, who’s choked a little on the mouthful of coffee he’s just swallowed.

“So, Chaz,” Dad says as he comes into the room, followed by Angelo, Rose’s husband, who is wearing a black suit with no tie and a black shirt unbuttoned almost to midchest. “Are you still in school?”

“Yes, sir,” Chaz says. “I have about three more years of course work left, then I have to start writing my dissertation, and then I’ll have to defend it. I hope after that I’ll be able to find a job and start teaching.”

“Oh?” Mom makes room on the couch for Dad to sit down beside her. “And where are you hoping to find a position? Back here in the Midwest? I know how you feel about the Wolverines. Or out East?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Chaz says with a shrug. “Wherever Lizzie is.”

Mom pauses with her coffee mug halfway to her lips, looking as if she’s not quite sure she’s heard Chaz correctly. Rose narrows her gaze and directs it pointedly to the ring on my left hand, while Angelo looks confused. Sarah coughs. Dad just grins affably and says, “Well, that’s nice,” and shovels the rest of his coffee cake into his mouth.

“I don’t get it,” Angelo says. “I thought Lizzie was engaged to that Luke guy. Chaz, weren’t you goin’ out with that lesbo friend of hers?”

“Who’s Luke?” Dad wants to know.

“Oh, you remember, dear,” Mom says. “We talked to him on the phone. That nice boy Lizzie met in France.”

“I’m still engaged to Luke,” I say quickly. “Things are just… complicated right now.”

“Are they ever,” Rose says, getting up and grabbing Chaz’s and Dad’s empty plates. “Too bad Gran’s gone. She’d have loved this.”

And I realize, a little belatedly, that Rose is right. Not only would Gran have loved what’s going on between me and Chaz, but she’d have been rooting for it. She was the one who’d urged me not to get engaged. She was the one who always thought Chaz was my boyfriend all along.

And a hunk too, if memory serves.

Gran had been right.

About a lot of things, it turns out.

T he first wedding rings were worn only by brides, not grooms. That’s because the first brides were considered possessions by their husbands and once “ringed” (or captured), they were considered their husbands’ property. The ring—though still worn on the fourth finger of the left hand, the finger with the vein thought to lead to the heart—was a symbol of the husband’s ownership. It wasn’t until World War II, in fact, that it became popular for men as well as women to wear wedding rings, and not until the Korean War that it became standard.

Why is this? Why, so women could be sure that their menfolk, when away from home, were reminded that they were not available!

Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

When canceling a wedding, it is appropriate, but not mandatory, to send out formal announcements. Informing friends and family verbally that your plans have changed is fine. If, however, you are postponing the wedding, it is necessary to send out a card simply stating the rescheduled date and location of the wedding. If calling all the guests on your list to tell them that your wedding is canceled is too painful for you, have someone else—such as your wedding gown designer—do it for you. That’s what we’re here for! Well, what our receptionists are here for, anyway.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS
^™

“Honey, where have you been?” Mom demands as Chaz and I enter the church, late. This was a deliberate ploy on Chaz’s part to spare me what he’d declared to be a barbarous practice—the viewing, which had been scheduled for the hour prior to the funeral.

Unfortunately, I discover as Mom grabs my hand, they’ve kept the casket open just for me.

“Hurry,” she says, tugging urgently. “They’re about to close it.”

“Uh, that’s okay,” I say. “I’m good.”

“No, honey,” Mom says. “You, more than anyone, need the closure of seeing Gran at peace.”

“No,” I say. “I really don’t, Mom.”

But Mom evidently doesn’t believe me, because she rips me from the safety of Chaz’s protective embrace and drags me to the side of Gran’s coffin, which is at the back of the church, waiting to be wheeled to its place of honor up front. The lid is open, and Gran, looking incredibly small and frail—and completely unlike her normal self—is inside. I stare in horror.

“See?” Mom says in comforting tones, pulling me toward it. “It’s all right. They did an incredible job. She looks like she’s just sleeping.”

Gran does not look like she’s sleeping. She looks like a wax dummy. For one thing, whoever did her face put way too much rouge on her. And for another, they’ve put her in a blue dress with a collar that’s too high and lacy—something she’d never have worn in life—and clasped her hands across her chest over a rosary.

A can of Bud would have been entirely more appropriate.

“You can kiss her good-bye if you want,” Mom says to me soothingly.

I don’t want to insult anyone, but the truth is, I’d sooner kiss DJ Tippycat.

“No,” I say. “That’s okay.”

“Maggie kissed her,” Mom says, looking a little affronted.

I look around for my niece, expecting to find her huddled in a corner of the church, rocking gently and telling herself everything’s going to be all right. But she’s over by the doors trying to fill a Snapple bottle with holy water and telling her cousins it’s okay, she drinks it all the time.

“Uh,” I say to Mom. “I’m good. Really.”

I don’t care if my six-year-old niece did it before me, and I don’t care if it is Gran: No way am I kissing a dead body.

“Well,” Mom says as the funeral attendant, obviously fuming about having been kept waiting this long, takes this as his cue to lower the lid to the coffin. “I guess it’s too late now.”

But in a way, I realize, it isn’t. Also that Mom’s right. And that the half hour Chaz spent driving crazily around town, insisting we not get to the church until he was certain the casket would be closed, had been for nothing.

Because seeing Gran like this—this empty shell of a body, this statue of her former self—has given me a form of closure. It’s proven to me that the essence of Gran, what made her… well, Gran, is really and truly gone.

And when the funeral attendant snaps the casket closed, I suddenly don’t feel sad anymore. At least, not as sad. Because that isn’t my grandmother he’s shutting up inside that box. I don’t know where my grandmother is.

But she isn’t there.

And that’s a huge relief. Wherever Gran is now, I know she’s finally free.

I wish I could say the same for me.

“Let’s go,” Mom says, taking Dad’s arm and pulling him away from the wall of church bulletins, which he’s been assiduously studying this whole time (Dad’s always been powerless in the face of flyers). “Girls.” She snaps her fingers at Rose and Sarah, who are trying to gather their progeny. “It’s time.”

And like magic, Father Jim appears with a few altar boys holding candles, and then we all fall into our places behind the coffin, which is wheeled to its place of honor before the congregation, almost none of whom I recognize… except Shari, whose gaze locks with mine as Chaz leads me down the aisle. She’s standing with her parents, and at the sight of her I realize, guiltily, that I really ought to have checked my cell phone, which has been vibrating angrily all day, no doubt with messages from Shari, telling me she’s arrived.

Well, I know it now. And she knows I know. And she knows something else too, judging from the expression on her face… she knows I’ve got beard burn from making out—and more—with her ex-boyfriend.

Honestly, I can’t think about that right now. I look away from her, my cheeks on fire—and not from beard burn—and slip with Chaz into the front pew with the rest of my family as Father Jim goes up before the altar and the mass begins.

It soon becomes obvious that exactly what I feared was going to happen has happened: This isn’t a funeral for my grandmother. It’s a funeral for some woman with the same name as my grandmother.