“I wasn’t joking,” Shannon says weakly.
Carol looks at us in confusion as Amy starts finger-combing her hair and Shannon grabs a small gym bag and heads for the bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
The three of us stop our bustling around. Amy gets an uneasy look, her eyes floating to me. Clearly, I’m the one who is going to have to explain what just happened.
“We, um...there actually is a bachelorette party.”
“I know! Mom booked it behind your and Shannon’s back and now...oh....” She’s looking at us critically, as if she’s processing nanosecond by nanosecond what we’re up to.
We’re silent as I struggle to figure out how to say this.
“We faked Mom out,” Amy says bluntly. “We all pretended to get our periods and cancel the bachelorette party because we knew Mom would crash it.”
The brownie in Carol’s hand breaks in half. Chuckles is in her lap and it falls on his head. He sniffs it like it’s a live hand grenade, then scurries off.
“You what?”
“It was easy for Amanda to pretend she was in pain,” Amy says, coming over to me and rubbing my back compassionately. “She’s in break-up mode. That’s worse than period mode.”
I nod.
Shannon comes back into the room wearing a glittery outfit clearly designed for pub crawling fun. It’s a pale purple, with a shiny silver sheen, and a cowl neckline. Retro ’70s.
“That just means Amanda can drink alcohol out of a man’s navel and not worry about remembering his name when she wakes up next to him in the morning,” she says with a wink.
“But he won’t know to get me a breve latte,” I joke, mortified to find that real tears are threatening my eyelids as I say the words.
“Wait. Hold on. Back up,” Carol insists. “This is all...you were just pretending you all got your periods to get Mom to go off on a snipe hunt? Isn’t that really cruel?”
“A half-naked man stripper snipe hunt,” Amy adds.
Carol wavers. “That’s not so bad, I guess.”
“Amy probably has something you can borrow to wear,” Shannon says to her older sister. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you so you could prepare,” Shannon adds nervously, her words coming out like air from a tire pump. “But you’re the worst liar, Carol, and—”
“Hey! I am not! I’m a very good liar. You try eloping with Todd and being married to that jackass and not learn how to lie.”
“But you can’t lie to Daddy. And he can’t lie to Mom. We had to limit the circle of knowledge.” Shannon fluffs her hair with Amy’s hair pick, but because Shannon has hair with the consistency of Easter basket grass and the waviness of a straight edge, she just looks like she’s picking through brown corn silk.
“The circle of knowledge? And hold on. You mean you all don’t have your periods right now?”
We three shake our heads.
“Damn it! I do!” she cries out, clasping the heating pad hard to her belly.
“Oh, man,” Amy mumbles in sympathy.
“And I’m the only one in here who can’t get pregnant!” Carol grouses. “But I still get my stupid periods. I’m between you three and Mom and Pam. I’m stuck in the middle.” I’m assuming that’s an allusion to having her tubes tied after she had her youngest son.
No one is listening to her as we change clothes and fluff and primp and get ready for a night on the town.
Carol jumps up, sighs, and pops some ibuprofen.
“All right. What can I squeeze into from Amy’s closet? Dad’s got Jeffrey and Tyler for the night.” She sets down a half-eaten pint of ice cream, licking the spoon clean and shoving it in the treat. “Might as well have some fun that doesn’t involve using my mouth.”
We all practically crack our necks looking at her.
She grins back.
And looks just like her mom.
* * *
A long time ago, Shannon informed me she wanted a private room at a huge piano bar for singalongs and strippers. Hiring male strippers who can sing was surprisingly easy.
As we walk in to the private room, a familiar Billy Joel tunes carries through the air from twin baby grand pianos that face each other. A row of tables sits in front of them, with layers radiating out from the center formed by the two pianos.
There is no bar tonight. It’s all an open bar with table service, and all bankrolled by Anterdec. The only stipulation James McCormick placed on me when I made the bachelorette party arrangements was that I invite enough Anterdec employees, contractors, and subsidiary company workers to make it a legitimate business deduction.
That was easy.
Half of the male performers from O are here. I invited Declan’s assistant, Grace, and Andrew’s assistant. Shannon invited a gaggle of women she works with in Marketing at Anterdec, so we’re pretty much covered there.
As we settle in at the table of honor, one of the cocktail servers plunks a bottle of chilled Champagne and a bucket of chilled wine coolers on the table.
Actually, that’s not a bucket.
That’s a trough. It takes two servers to lift the ice-and-bottle-filled bucket onto the table in front of us.
“Now that’s what I call table service!” shouts a familiar voice.
Shannon gives me a look, as if Satan himself were whispering our names from the depths of Hell.
Right behind us.
We turn around slowly to find a very pleased with herself Marie, holding an open bottle of Champagne, standing next to my mother, who appears to be as drunk as I have ever seen her.