Plus Josh, who is happily pouring shots into some guy’s belly button. Except I’m not sure he’s a stripper....
We dance until they kick us out.
And then we puke.
Okay, so technically, my mom is the only one who pukes. There’s always one in every crowd when you go clubbing, and tonight it’s the woman who gave birth to me.
“I’ll hold your hair, Pammy! ‘Cause tha’s what bess frienns do.” Marie proceeds to grab my mom’s purse from her.
“That’s not her hair.”
“What?” Marie looks at mom’s purse cross-eyed.
I sigh and reach for mom’s hair.
The retching definitely puts a damper on the night. Luckily, I am not a sympathy gagger. Poor Mom has a system clearly not cut out for alcohol, and I’m actually surprised she drank at all tonight. We don’t keep alcohol in the house. I’ve never seen her even tipsy.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she says, trying to compose herself. “I think I drank more tonight than in the past twenty years combined. I also touched more man skin tonight than in the past two decades.”
“Go Pammy!” Marie says, high-fiving my mom. She misses and goes flat on the ground, purse clutched in her other hand.
Growing up means realizing your parents are flawed human beings who are just twenty-five-year-older versions of your friends. Does that mean there’s no such thing as actual adults? We’re all just pretending?
“Pammy, you need to learn to hold your liquor.” Marie pulls herself up and brushes grass off her knees.
“Something old, something new, something borrowed, something spew,” Mom says in a sing-songy voice that immediately turns into a snore as I drag her to the open limo and tuck her into a spot.
“That’s not how it goes,” Marie protests. She follows Mom and doesn’t seem to realize she’s passed out.
And then she climbs inside and crashes on the seat, right in Mom’s lap.
Shannon walks up from behind. Carol’s already in the limo, and Amy is—oh, God, is she crouched around a corner, peeing in public? I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.
“Is that going to be us in a few decades?” Shannon ponders, her arm on my shoulder.
Marie’s hand cups my mom’s boob just as Amy walks over, adjusting her skirt.
“Oh, that needs to be captured on camera,” she says, reaching into her cleavage and pulling out a camera.
Click.
“Nothing on social media!” Shannon cautions.
Amy gets an uneasy look on her face. I instinctively reach for her hair and pull it back.
“What are you doing?” she says, recoiling.
“You looked queasy.”
“I was trying to decide whether to say something or not.”
“About what?”
“About social media.”
Shannon’s eyes narrow like a hawk’s. “Spill.”
Amy sighs. “Jessica Coffin was here.”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah. We had the bouncers kick her out, but we don’t know how much she saw.”
“I didn’t notice her,” I say.
Josh’s voice pops up behind me. “That’s because every single one of your senses was engaged in a piece of man beast named Zeke.”
“Who?”
“Your blow job man.”
We all nod as if this is a normal conversation.
“You guys see Jessica earlier?” Josh asks. When he drinks he gets chipper. “She heard a rumor Andrew and Amanda were dating.”
Ouch.
Were.
“If she took pictures, I’ll kill her,” Shannon warns.
“You want me to hack her again?” Josh asks, then slaps his hand over his mouth. “Er, I mean...someone should hack her Twitter account again.”
A light snore floats out from the limo. Then it’s in harmony and melody as both Mom and Marie make beautiful music together. I peer in to see Amy and Carol on either side of them. Josh is sitting across the way now, staring at the inside of the limo like it’s the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
To my surprise, Shannon walks over to the driver’s side, says something to a chauffeur I’ve never met, and closes the back doors, thumping the hood like a pro.
The limo takes off.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching the tail lights narrow to red, glowing pupils as the car disappears into the night down the city street.
“Gerald will arrive in ten minutes with another car.” Her sigh tells me everything and nothing. “I just needed to, you know...breathe.”
“Need me to hold your hair?”
“Hah. No. Poor Pam.”
“I think my mom got twenty years of teetotaling karma in one night.”
“No one can keep up with my mom when it comes to alcohol, I guess.” Shannon’s voice is wistful. A cool breeze cuts the night and I shiver, all gooseflesh and gobsmacked. The alcohol is wearing off and I feel myself spiraling down, gently, like an autumn leaf. The maudlin mood feels fine, given the night we’ve had.
“I think my mom was last in a club in 1991 or something,” I marvel. “I mean, asking the piano player for some song called ‘Walk the Dinosaur’? What the hell?”
We snort and snicker until another gust of wind makes us wrap our arms around ourselves as we wait.
“You okay?” she asks, giving me a look that says I need to tell the truth or she’ll just pull it out of me anyhow.
“No.”
“You miss Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry.”