AN: Hi, me again! So my kids go back to in person learning next week! Hooray! No more trying to write at midnight when the house if finally quiet! Please enjoy this next bit. For the record, there is a conversation that takes place in a restaurant. I have changed the names and appearances of the people involved, and inserted how I thought Steph's crew would react. Enjoy!
I ran out of the restaurant and jumped into my car, and high tailed it over to my mother's, berating myself for being a lousy friend. I did have a plan for Lula's baby shower present; I really did. It was nice having money for a change, and even though this was going to be an expensive endeavour, I thought it would show Lula just how much I appreciated her. Of course, the day came faster than I was planning. Before I could forget again, I made the call, made the arrangements, and hoped like hell Lula would love it for a post Baby gift.
The driveway was full of cars, and mom was at the door, greeting people. "Oh good! I was wondering if you got the location change," mom said. "Connie and I weren't sure if we called you or not."
"You and Connie?" I asked. "I thought grandma was going to help?"
"She was, she did, but it's been so long since she's planned a proper baby shower, and well, Connie has zero experience. I decided to lend a hand because, after all, Lula is family, and she deserves to have this done properly."
Oh crap. Sorry, Lula.
"What is that, that you're wearing?" Mom asked.
"A dress," I said. "Ranger picked it because he thinks I look pretty in it."
"It's a little sheer, but oh well. You don't have time to change now. Where's your gift?"
"Connie has it," I said, crossing my fingers.
I went inside and found Connie standing in the middle of the living room, holding a plate of cucumber sandwiches, and wearing a rictus grin. She gestured with her eyes to look around the room. Considering the baby shower decor, it was amazing she hadn't given herself a seizure with the attempted subtle eye movements. It looked like mom had gone into the attic and pulled out all of the baby shower decorations she'd ever accumulated through the years and then augmented it all with everything she could find at, at least, seven party stores. There were storks of all vintages, giant safety pins, baby blue and baby pink everything, and four diaper cakes. And why she thought it wouldn't be horrifying, I don't know, plastic dollar store babies were hanging from the ceiling. Thankfully she'd put them in cloth hammocks, so they looked like they were being delivered by storks, but honestly, they had the creepiest eyes ever. I stared at them in horror. Had she been in some weird menopausal fugue when she'd bought them? I made my way to Connie.
"Oh. My. God."
"You get used to the nightmare babies. The real problem is Lula. She's finally stopped puking over everything and is starving and pissed off that the sandwiches are made with unseasoned, low-rent pickles," Connie said.
"If you think about it, she's not completely wrong about cucumbers…"
"This is a fucking nightmare. Your grandmother is participating but only under protest."
"What did you and grandma want?"
"Your grandma was thinking the circus and then game night at my house."
"That or a rodeo bar, with waiters in chaps, and unlimited wings on the menu."
"That was our second choice," Connie said. "Do something before Lula starts eating the guests."
I walked over to Lula, who was dressed in a form-fitting, burgundy gown with feathers that started at her knees and formed a little train behind her. She had on killer heels to match. Her feet were crammed into them and swelling out like her cleavage usually did when she wore tank tops.
"Hey Mama," I said. "You look great!"
"It's my Beyonce look," Lula said. "But it's wasted on these biddies."
The biddies in question weren't paying Lula any attention. From the looks of it, mom's guest list was made up of every new grandmother in the Burg. "My mom means well."
"I don't know none of these people."
"I do, just endure it."
"I ain't enduring shit. Sally told me it was my shower and I was supposed to be a queen today. He told me to dress for it. Where the hell is my crown? Where are my fans?"
"By fans, do you mean admirers or half-naked men with giant feathers, fanning you."
"Both!"
"This is going to be fun. I'm sure of it," I lied. It was going to be awful. "I'll stick by you for the whole thing. I just need to speak to Connie in the kitchen for a minute," I said.
"Find me some food that isn't just made with bland condiments. You call them sandwiches? Where's the meat?"
"I'll look into it."
I walked over to Connie and went to take the tray from her, and had a minor tug of war over it. "Find your own fucking shield," she hissed.
"You're not going to fend these women that! It's finger food, not holy water." I snatched the tray out of her hands and put it on the coffee table. "Come with me."
I linked my arm with Connie's and plastered a smile on my face as I dragged her from the room. My intention was the kitchen, but it was filled with guests asking if my mother wanted any help, so I re-routed to the stairs, and we went up to my old bedroom. I closed the door, and I watched Connie's entire body unclench. Mine did too. "One on one is bad enough, but all of those women in one room? I thought I was going to have a stroke," Connie said.
"It was like each one of them is a physical manifestation of every criticism ever uttered to an unmarried woman over the age of thirty," I said.
"You're married now. You get a whole new hell. Have you got any flasks hidden in here? We can make a drinking game of every time I'm told I need to settle down, and you're asked when you and Ranger are going to start having kids."
"Two for when we're reminded that we're not getting any younger," I said. We both shuddered. "Okay, we have to save this baby shower, or Lula is never going to forgive us. Find a roadhouse or something, and book a table or private room if you can. Call Mary-Lou, and Sally, and tell them what's going on. Mary-Lou will know what to do, and Sally will handle transportation."
"What are you going to do?"
"Enlist Grandma and Tank and charge them with a special assignment."
I called Tank and informed him of his mission. He was perfectly capable of carrying it out by himself, but I was worried about Grandma getting bored and deciding to liven up the place. My mother would find a way to blame me for that, and I was just barely back in her good books. That's not what sold Tank on grandma duty; it was Lula's wrath if this party didn't get saved.
With Connie on the phone, I went downstairs again and cornered grandma. "Hey," I said.
"This party is a real stinker," she said.
"I know, I'm on it."
"Don't worry, Chickie; I have a plan already. Gimme a phone? Your mom took mine away from me, and I need to send a text."
"Nope," I said. "I need you to do something else. I've given Tank a job, and he needs your help. He'll be here in two minutes to pick you up."
"Tank is the big hottie, right? The one that always follows you around when Ranger is away?"
"One of them, yeah."
"I just need to freshen up my lipstick and find my handbag. I'm a single woman again, and I gotta make sure I look good."
"Do your thing, grandma," I said.
My mother came over to me as grandma scurried up the stairs, with a look of glee on her face.
"What did you say to her?" mom said with clenched teeth, "Where is she going?"
"I'm having Tank pick her up."
"Why?"
"I'm pretty sure she was thinking of ways to steal a phone so she could text her new in-laws." Grandma had been briefly married to a male stripper who considered his dance company his family. Mom stared at me in horror. If grandma brought in strippers in front of Lula's friends, my mother would start drinking and figure out a way to live down the shame. If grandma brought in strippers in front of my mother's friends, mom might have to end her own life because that's the only way she'd ever hear the end of it. She flung her arms around me in a hug. It was awkward, and we both felt it instantly. She let me go and straightened her dress.
"Yes. Well," mom said, "Thank you." Then she walked away.
We were not a family of huggers. We did it at Christmas, weddings, and the birth of children. That was pretty much it. She hadn't even hugged me at either of my weddings. After I recovered from the shock of it, I made my way to Lula and kept my promise to stick with her through the whole party.
Party was a strong word for the event. Yes, there were many people and a mountain of presents, but the atmosphere was not exactly festive. It was like standing outside of church after the service. Nobody knew the guest of honor, so they gossiped about neighbors and chatted about the new recipes they were trying. At one point, I know Lula fell asleep. When this happened, mom glared at me to wake up the snoring baby mama and suggested we start playing games.
If this were a baby shower for my sister, she would have been all over this party. This was her thing. This was not Lula. She didn't want to play pin the diaper on the baby or guess the baby food flavour by sniffing a diaper smeared with goo. When mom handed out the streamers and had people tear of lengths to guess Lula's belly's size, I thought I was going to have to sedate my friend. She didn't handle comments about her weight when she wasn't swollen with pregnancy, add the Baby belly and the cankles, and she was especially touchy.
"Just pretend it's funny," I hissed through gritted teeth and surreptitiously ripped a streamer that had to be six feet long, in half. She seemed to like the smaller streamers better. Frankly, I didn't blame her. If I were pregnant and people were pulling off strips the size of an anaconda, I'd probably burst into tears. Also, most of these women either had a warped sense of humour or were just outright cruel. Lula was sporting a decent sized belly, but honestly, some of these streamers were just rude.
By the end of the game, I was actually pissed and fully prepared to tear into my mother after the party, upside-down cake be damned, because this was just hurtful. Then it came time to open the presents, and I realized just how many there were. I looked at my mother and realized that this was the whole point of her party coup. Lula didn't need gifts from her mostly childless friends who didn't have a clue what a new mother really needed.
Every one of these women was a grandmother whose daughters had young kids, and every one of them had given Lula the practical necessities. It was my turn to be unexpectedly overwhelmed with gratitude.
I left Lula as she opened a seat designed to help babies learn to sit and went to my mother. I hugged her from the side, and she patted my arm. "I get it now."
"This may be a dreadful party, but these are the most competitive women in the Burg. Nobody is going to risk being considered cheap or frivolous," mom said.
"I hadn't thought of that," I said.
"Of course you didn't. A friend's job is moral support. Can I tell you something? When I was pregnant with Val, I was terrified. I had your father, I had friends who were new mothers, and I had countless relatives who were willing to give me advice, but none of it helped. You know who did? Mother. I don't know what I would have done without her when you two were born. Now I know I'm not Lula's mother, but her mother is not in the picture, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let Lula go through this without one. I will be there when that child is born, and I will be staying in her guest room until she gets the hang of things, just like I did for Valerie, and just like I will for you if you ever get around to giving me more grandchildren."
"You're amazing, mom. Really."
"Nonsense," mom said, "Lula is family."
"We're going to a roadhouse for wings after. It would be awesome if you came."
"Excellent. I hate cucumber sandwiches," mom said. She looked around the place and chuckled, "It's a bit much, isn't it?"
"It's memorable. Why the babies on the ceiling?"
"It was your sister's idea," mom said. "I'm going to have nightmares for weeks."
My dad wheeled in a crib an hour later, and mom showed Lula a quilt she had made for the baby. At that, Lula did shed a tear. Mom had made it in the sorts of brilliant colours that Lula and Sally both wore. The blocks on the quilt were twists like the candy print that was Sally's trademark. Mom said something to Lula that caused Lula to burst into sobs and pull mom into a bone-crushing hug. The party broke up after that. After the last of the biddies left, Sally arrived with his bus, and we piled on.
Grandma and Tank boarded the bus last and presented Lula with what was, unmistakably, a beauty pageant crown. It was at least a foot tall and covered in a rainbow of glass gems that were damn near blinding in the afternoon sunlight.
Tank crowned her, she cried some more, though more carefully because she didn't want to lose her crown, and then Connie, mom and I spent the rest of the bus ride trying to secure it to Lula's head. The roadhouse Connie found was called No Bulls***. It was new and popular, and the lot was packed. Even with our reservation, we still waited for ten minutes before they seated us at a bunch of tables positioned in front of a long banquet. It might have been roomy if we'd been toddlers; as it was, we felt like sardines, but that didn't matter. Lula was on cloud nine. This was the baby shower she'd been picturing, a party where she was worshipped and spoiled by the people she loved.
Mom didn't stay long, and she took grandma home with her. Mary Lou had to go at 4:00 to pick her kids up from swimming, and after about an hour, the only people left were me, Sally, Connie, and Lula. Lula was doing her best to squash the biggest sundae I'd ever seen into a belly already full of baby, while Sally told us about his plans for his impending Christmas collection.
"That reminds me," I said. "I gave away the last stuff you gave me."
"Oh?" Sally asked. "Wasn't your scene?"
"I got blown up, and the girl who helped me out afterwards was a big fan. I figured you'd let me jump the line to buy replacements."
"Buy?" He said. "Fuck that. You get your shit for free."
A group of twenty something's was at the table next to us, and something cracked them up. This wasn't a big roadhouse, and it was busy, so we'd been asked to compress ourselves so they could use the vacant seats. It was at the point that if I breathed out too vigorously, there was a good chance I'd elbow one of the girls at the next table.
There were three girls and two guys next to us, and we were sort of trying not to eavesdrop, but damn, it was hard not to. One of the girls had her hair dyed black with green roots, trying to be Billie Eilish. She appeared to be holding court at her table.
"So like, Madam Keen, she actually said she could predict, down to the minute, when we would die. That it was her specialty. So, Kimmy, she says she wants to know, and Madam Keen, she says that Kimmy has a month, maybe two, tops. So I'm like, freaking out, and Kimmy says, whatever, and she goes back to class. Can you believe that? I sure as fuck wouldn't be doing that."
"Me neither," another girl said. "God. Did you tell her she was being dumb?"
"Yeah, but she told me to stop being dramatic."
"What would you do if madam Keen told you you only had like a year to live?" One of the guys asked.
"I'd drop out, get my tuition back, and spend my parents' money doing something worthwhile and not waste it studying shit nobody really cares about."
"Right?" Girl three said, and there were general nods of agreement around the table.
I looked at Connie, and Lula, and Sally. These kids couldn't be serious, right? We'd seen some weird shit, and Lula was all about crazy fads and superstitions, but that was insane. If a woman told me to the minute when I would die, I'd be freaked out, sure. If I dropped out of school and used my parents' money to do whatever, it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy because my parents would kill me. Besides, this Madam Keen didn't tell her to the minute, as advertized; she ballparked it.
"So these Christmas Colours," I said, trying to drown out the crazy next to me. "Are you going to do a regular lipstick? This liquid lip stuff freaks me out."
"The liquid lipstick stuff is what's in right now," Sally said, "But we're working on a long-wear lipstick formula. The problem is, that shit dries your lips outright and…" he trailed off because the conversation had switched from fortune tellers to cheating boyfriends. We were sort of hanging on Not Billie's every word.
"So we're getting ready to leave right, and you'll never guess what Conrad did. Like right in front of me. Never."
What did Conrad do? We had to know. We weren't even trying to hide our eavesdropping. We were all looking at the table. For me, it was a genuine desire for this girl to redeem herself after the whole medium thing. That's a lie. It was live, reality tv.
"He hugs her," she said, "Right there in front of me, but behind my back. He waited until I wasn't looking to hug her. Can you fucking believe that? Like I was right there."
"Oh god, what did you do?" One of her ladies in waiting asked.
"I stood up, and I told him what I thought."
"Which was?" I whispered impatiently.
"I told him he was obviously cheating on me."
"Well yeah," one of her friends said. "What did he say?"
"He said, 'I just hugged her. What's your problem?' So I said, he waited until I wasn't looking, which meant he was hiding it from me. If he didn't mean anything by it, then he should hug her in front of me while I'm looking. Then he had the nerve to say I was being irrational! I mean, if it's no big deal, why doesn't he just hug her again? So she says, 'I think you need to calm down, Jenny. Conrad and I were over years ago. Just because he lost his v-card to me doesn't mean we still have feelings for each other. Right, Conrad?' She was totally rubbing it in my face. So then I demand that they hug again in front of me, and Conrad tells me that I don't trust him. I mean, what the hell does that mean? I trust him; I just don't appreciate being disrespected in front of my face behind my back…"
I looked at Connie and mouthed, "What the hell?"
Connie pulled out her phone and group-texted us.
-Conrad needs to run. That girl is fucking gonzo.
"So, have you guys come up with any names?" I asked, without any real interest in the answer, and I was ignored. This was a train wreck, and we just couldn't look away. Someone was talking about a crazy date they'd been on, and the talk, in general, was about crazy ex's and all I could think was that I was old because what they thought of as crazy seemed downright reasonable to me. One guy told a story about someone being pissed off that his date always brought her coat to the bar and paid for the coat check instead of saving her money. I didn't know not wanting to be cold was crazy. Nor was I aware that not going to ladies' night when it was cheaper was fiscally irresponsible. Apparently, the excuse that she had an early class the next morning and didn't want to be hungover for it was downright stupid.
"Well, everyone has had a crazy ex before, right?" one of the guys said, patting his buddy's shoulder in commiseration.
Then fake Billie or Jenny, or whatever said. "Nope, not me. I've been super lucky."
That was Lula's breaking point. She stood up and nearly upended our table with her belly. I would have stopped her, but really, who was I to deny a pregnant woman her stress relief... especially after mom's party.
"First of all, I'm a superstitious person, and lemme tell you if I was your mama and heard you talking about dropping outta school, that I paid for because some bitch with a shiny bowling ball told you you gonna die in six months, I'd kick your ass from here to next Tuesday! Second, useless shit nobody cares about? What the fuck you taking? If you think it's useless, get off your ass and take something important!"
"Here here!" Connie said.
"And by the way? Using the coat check isn't crazy. I've done the hypothermia thing, and it ain't fun," I said.
"And you little girl," Lula said, rounding on Fake Billie, "They right. Everyone has a crazy ex. If you haven't, then take a good look in the mirror because you the crazy one. You don't trust your man. You don't even respect his ass. You were there, he hugged her, you coulda looked at any minute. You outta your damn mind if you think he's the one who fucked up because you lost your head. Damn!"
"Who told you to listen to our conversation, Karen," Billie said.
"Oh, you didn't just call me no Karen," Lula said. She looked like she was about to flatten the group, and then Sally stood up.
"Oh-Em-GEEE!" Billie Squealed. "You're Sally Sweet."
The girls at the table looked like they were about to mob him, but they had to go through Lula first, and she wasn't having it. "Get the fuck away from my baby's daddy. I don't want none of your crazy rubbing off on him…."
"Wait… you're straight?" Billie said.
"Sometimes," Sally said. "Come on, Lu, let's get out of here."
"You're sticking up for her after what she said about us?"
"She's carrying my baby, dude. Course I'm sticking by her."
"Yeah, but what about what she said?"
"What about it?" Sally asked. "The way I look at it, there are haters everywhere. If what they say is complete bullshit, why should you let it bother you? If what they say hurts a bit much, it means it's time to do some inner listening, dude, and ask yourself why it hurts? Oh, and I've been to Madam Keen. She only takes appointments because she uses Insta for most of the shit she uses to tell you secrets about yourself."
That shut them up effectively, and we left the restaurant. Lula muttering the whole way. "Can you believe that shit? Like what the hell is this generation coming to?"
"Let's not judge a whole generation by a really scary sampling," I said.
"That shit was an advertisement for birth control," Connie said.
"Thanks," Lula muttered.
"I'm sure your kid will be smarter than that; Look at her parents?"
We were about to pile into Sally's bus when Ranger pulled into the lot in my car. He waved me over, and I waved goodbye to Connie, Lula and Sally, and went to ride with him.
"Did you call?" I asked. I hadn't heard my phone.
"Morelli just called," Ranger said. "Bucky took exception to having the case taken away from him and decided to get off his ass to do some actual investigating. He called Morelli from Moonachie; it seems he's found something big, and he wants backup."
"There's nothing to be found in Moonachie," I said. "Like actually nothing."
"Bucky thinks there is, and Morelli is meeting us at the warehouse."
I got into my car with Ranger, and we pulled out of the lot, "What could he have possibly found? The only lead was to the college."
