A/N: Hi Everyone, thank you if you are still reading. I haven't updated this story in over a month, but I haven't abandoned it...I got a new puppy and I'm severely sleep deprived. The updates will continue, but at a slower pace. Happy New Year!
Constance Isles slipped out of her smoke-colored d'Orsay Louboutins and made her way barefoot through the sand toward her daughter. Stopping in front of Maura's beach chair, she removed her sunglasses and peered down at the flustered younger woman.
"Hello, darling."
"Mother…" Maura leapt instantly her feet, tripping over her discarded beach towel and flag. She landed on one knee, looking to all the world as if she were a commoner genuflecting before the queen.
Constance sighed. "Twelve years of ballet lessons and six of deportment and you fall getting out of a chair. Come, come…" She extended her hand and hauled her daughter up, pulling her into an awkward embrace.
"I'm at a loss, Mother. What are you doing here?" Maura whispered into her mother's hair. She was enveloped in the scent of Constance: jasmine and rose, the top notes of Jean Patou's Joy parfum, laced with cigarette smoke and whisky, crisp linen and tea leaves, the full line of Erno Laszlo face powders and moisturizers.
"You're my only child and you're getting married. Do you think I would miss the opportunity to orchestrate the wedding of my dreams?" Constance squeezed her daughter's hands for emphasis.
"Your dreams?" Maura pulled back, but Constance held both of her hands firmly in her own.
"Of course. My mother dictated every aspect of my ceremony and reception from the choice of venue to the color of the table linens to the flavor of sorbet served during the intermezzo; the only say I had was in my choice of groom. Now it's my turn, and I don't have the luxury of months of planning; I have barely a week."
Maura swallowed hard. "A week?" she squeaked.
Constance didn't answer, she had turned toward the helicopter, gesturing at the pilot that he should pick up the dozens of boxes he had unloaded and carry them off of the beach.
"One week. I need to be in Dubai next Tuesday."
Angela circled the green helicopter, happily waving at the crowd of onlookers, shaking hands and blowing kisses. A small girl in a Dora the Explorer bathing suit approached and proudly offered a mangled starfish, missing one leg, that she had found buried in the sand. Angela took it in both hands, cradling it as if it were a treasure.
"Thank you, sweetheart."
"Welcome." The child looked up at her. "Can I ride in your helicopter?"
"Sure." Angela gestured grandly and the girl clambered into the passenger compartment. The pilot shot Angela an exasperated look, but she ignored him.
Jane strode across the beach toward her mother, who was now posing for pictures, one lavender-clad arm wrapped around the shoulders of a young blonde man in a thong speedo.
"Ma!"
"Shush." She whispered as Jane approached. "These people think I'm somebody; maybe a movie star. I could be Gina Lollobrigida or Miss Sophia Loren in disguise."
Jane's face softened as she took in her mother; an inch of gray roots visible in the part of her hair, a knock-off Michael Kors bag slung over her shoulder, the faux leather worn thin at the seams, a tomato sauce stain on the left breast of her ancient track suit; no doubt Angela had packed a meatball spuckie to eat on her flight. There was about as much chance of Angela Rizzoli being mistaken for Sophia Loren as Jane herself being pegged as Melissa Etheridge.
"Ma…" She said more gently. "…you are somebody. I'm glad you're here."
Angela launched herself at her daughter, wrapping her arms around Jane's skinny waist and squeezing, planting kisses under her chin and along her jawline.
"This is my baby." She announced to the crowd. "And she's getting married…to a beautiful doctor. I'm so freakin' happy I could just shit."
The onlookers clapped. Calls of "Congratulations!" and "Mazel Tov" rang through the salty air.
"Say something, Janie." Angela nudged her daughter in her bare ribcage.
"What?"
"Like a speech." Angela husked in her ear. "If we were in a movie, you'd step forward and tell everyone how you met Maura and fell in love; how you were waitin' your whole life to meet the right girl, and it took your mother to point you in the right direction."
Jane rolled her eyes. "This is not a movie, Ma, and nobody gives a shit. Let's go."
Angela frowned, reluctant to leave the small group of onlookers who had made her feel like a celebrity. She turned back to the people that she had begun to think of as her fans, but they had dispersed, returning to their sand chairs and beach blankets without a further thought to the lime green helicopter and its passengers.
She turned her gaze back to Jane. Snapshots of her daughter filled Angela's mind like a time elapsed montage in a movie: Jane as a sullen, chubby tomboy, stuffed into a pink taffeta Easter dress but refusing to remove her muddy sneakers to don white patent-leather shoes; Jane on prom night, a gangly teenager sitting on the sofa with her brothers watching a Red Sox game; Jane's academy graduation and promotion to detective, how striking her daughter looked in her dress blues and how alone she stood while her classmates posed for pictures with spouses and lovers; finally, Jane running nervous fingers through her hair as she set the table for Sunday dinner, consulting a battered etiquette book she'd borrowed from the Boston Public Library; her friend Maura was dining with them and everything had to be perfect. Angela had known that day what it took her daughter six more years to figure out: Maura was the one and all roads lead to here and now. Jane was not going to leave Fire Island without a wedding ring on her finger unless she left in a pine box with Angela's own hand prints around her neck.
"Ma! What are you staring at? Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose?"
"No, baby. You look…well, you look like you need some work before you can walk down the aisle, but mommy's here and it will all be fine."
"We're in no hurry. Just enjoy your week on the beach. You have all winter to plan a wedding." Jane extended her hand and Angela took it. "Come meet our friends."
"Friends? Good. You'll need a couple of bridesmaids. You're getting married next Saturday."
Jane rolled her eyes, a "yeah, right" dying on her tongue as she caught the determined set of her mother's jaw and the stricken look on Maura's face as she stood speaking to her own mother.
Jane kicked the screen door open and it slammed back into her face before she could shimmy the hand truck, loaded down with cartons, through the opening. She tried again, this time backing through and bracing the door with her hip, careful to hold tight to the top three boxes, labeled "fragile" in Angela's looping handwriting.
"A little help here!" She shouted.
No one responded, but she could hear the sound of her mother's voice, low and cajoling and Constance's, clipped and correct, coming through the clinic from the kitchen beyond.
"Help! It's not on me if this topples to the floor."
"Jane Clementine, if you drop that box there will be hell to pay. You can drive all the way back to Boston to the salumeria to replace the ingredients I got in there." Angela appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips.
"Then hold the freakin' door open."
Kaye had appeared on the walkway, or at least she assumed it was Kaye. The woman wasn't as tall as Jane and her own load of boxes towered over her head as she rolled another hand truck borrowed from Cherry's.
"Tell your friend to be careful. Where's Constance's luggage? I hope you didn't just leave it on the beach."
"Ma!" Jane growled between clenched teeth. "Hold the god-damn cocksucking door!"
"You are so nasty, Janie. I hope you don't talk to Maura that way." Angela swatted at Jane's shoulder and the top box slid from the pile and, flipping once, landed on the planked decking at their feet. Immediately, an oily orange stain began to form as a plastic container filled with eggplant caponata disgorged its contents.
"Now look what you did!" Angela stared at the rapidly spreading oil slick as if her angry expression would make the eggplant rethink its poor behavior and leap back into its container.
Only Maura's arrival, flushed as she was from bearing the weight of her mother's bags over both shoulders and dragging an enormous wheeled travel case behind her, kept Jane from losing her temper completely.
"Maura, could you please remove my mother from the porch and hold the door open for me?"
When they entered the kitchen, Faye was sitting calmly at the table with a mother on each side, listening to competing versions of wedding plans. Angela had her mother-of-the-bride book open and was stabbing at a crude drawing on a page halfway through the book.
"But just look at this one." She whined. "I designed it myself."
"Ma, she's blind. She can't look at anything."
Angela was not chagrined. "Well, she can taste. I'm gonna make it tomorrow, a trial run. My cake will be better than anything you can buy in some bakery in New York. Mine will be made with love, and you can taste the difference."
Constance huffed, fumbling in her Prada purse for her pack of Gauloises. "La Tulipe created the cake for Chelsea Clinton's wedding. There's an eleven month waiting list, but I managed to secure their services for this week. They will fly their creation in on Friday afternoon along with a sufficient amount of dry ice, as ample refrigeration space may be an issue."
Angela pouted. "Tell them not to bother. I got it covered."
Constance lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, blowing twin curls of smoke from her nostrils.
"Made of a gluten-free flour blend, the French vanilla sponge cake will be layered with dark chocolate mousse. Its nine tiers will stand four feet tall, all covered in vanilla fondant. Each tier will then be decorated with a variety of flowers; my favorite, the calla lily, Maura's, the peony, and the heraldic septfoil in tinted rose from the Isles family crest." She waved her cigarette through the air as if she were using its burning tip to design the cake before their eyes.
"Wow, that's a lot of cake." Kaye carried the last box into the room and wiped at her brow. "How many people are you expecting at this shindig?"
Angela ignored the question. "My cake is Janie's favorite. It's made with twenty boxes of Devil Dogs held together with Nutella and covered in Duncan Hines chocolate frosting. I bought two wedding toppers and broke off the grooms to make two brides." She dug in her own purse and pulled out the white veiled figurines, each wrapped in paper toweling. "Look, the dark one is a head taller, it's perfect."
Jane peered at the little brides in her mother's outstretched hands. "Ma, that bride is African-American."
"So. It's summer and you're Sicilian; by the end of the week you'll be a shade darker than her. The white brunette bride at Walmart had a weird mouth. I didn't like her at all. This one looks more like you."
Jane shrugged. "Whatever. Lemme see Maura."
Angela passed over the plastic strawberry blonde. "She's got a nice bust."
"Yes, she does." Jane showed the figure to Kaye who whistled in appreciation.
"Good job, Ma." She pecked her mother on top of the head. "And that cake sounds delicious. We can have both when we get married, but not this week. Why rush?"
"Of course this week!" Angela shouted. "I broke the bank for all of that food, cashed in my Christmas Club fund and everything. Constance canceled a series of lectures and flew in from Martinique…"
"Marrakech." The elder Isles amended.
"I'll cover your expenses, Ma." Jane whispered in her mother's ear. "No worries."
"Bullshit. Your father can cough up his share; his only daughter is getting married. A week is plenty of time to make a wedding. My parents planned my wedding in the three days that your father was home on leave. I was in the family way and it couldn't wait. Nonno rented a room at the Knights of Columbus Hall and Nonna and her sisters cooked for 48 hours straight. We have twice that time."
Constance rose and looked around for an ashtray. When none was to be found she filled a juice glass with tap water and flicked her cigarette into it. "It's all arranged, girls. I've hired tents to set up on the beach, a portable dance floor, chairs and tables…" She began to tick items off on her hand. "A string quartet and a nine-piece band for entertainment, flowers will arrive the morning of via the cargo ferry along with a catering crew and wait staff."
"They're not catering everything, just some passed hors d'oeuvres." Angela interrupted. "I'm doing most of the cooking myself. We'll have all of your favorites, Jane, except for the eggplant."
"Your eggplant was mostly salvageable. Jo Friday is licking up what couldn't be saved right now."
Angela grunted. "There's still plenty to do. First, you two need to get your butts to Riverhead for a marriage license."
"Where the fuck is that?" Jane dropped into a chair opposite her mother and pulled Maura into her lap.
"It's the county seat of Suffolk, population 33,000. Home to the Suffolk Historical Society and the Long Island Aquarium. It was founded by settlers from New England in 1649 on land purchased from the Shinnecock Indian Nation." Maura perched stiffly on Jane's lap. Reciting facts always helped calm her nerves. "However, a second wave of immigration, not from New England, but from Poland, increased the town's population tenfold at the turn of the last century. These new immigrants were fleeing religious persecution when Roman Catholic Poland was split between Protestant Prussia and Orthodox Russia."
"Fascinating, Maura." Constance deadpanned, lighting another cigarette.
"It is." Faye spoke for the first time. "Kaye had a detective in her squad, Karol Babiak. His people had a farm near Riverhead. We made a pilgrimage to eastern Long Island every fall to take Tom pumpkin picking and we always made a point to stop at the Babiak farm stand for fresh vegetables. Lovely people; I'm glad to know their history."
"Babe Babiak!" Kaye laughed. "I should give him a call. I think he retired out here. He's probably sitting on a tractor drinking a beer as we speak."
Jane rested her chin on Maura's shoulder. "Maybe we could find a good Polish restaurant when we're in town. I love pierogi."
Maura inhaled one shaky breath. "So we're doing this?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"A gay wedding in a gay town. That's perfect." Kaye strode to the refrigerator. "Let's have a beer to celebrate."
"I'll have a scotch, neat." Constance stood. "Maura, where are my quarters? I need to freshen up before dinner. I called ahead and reserved a table at Top of the Bay. I was told that is the only decent restaurant in Cherry Grove."
Maura blanched. "There's one free bedroom upstairs. You'll have to share with Angela."
The elder Rizzoli clapped her hands. "Roomies! I love a slumber party. We can stay up all night and talk about the wedding."
Constance composed her face into a tight smile. "Thank you, Angela, but I'm certain I will be able to find accommodations in town. We flew over that rather gaudy hotel on the way in."
"The Belvedere?" Faye asked. "I don't know about that…"
"Yes. That's what the pilot said it was called. "I'll check in now and have them send a porter for my things."
Jane grinned. "You do that, Constance. If you manage to get a room at the Belvedere, I'll buy you a subscription to the Metropolitan Opera and escort you to your box every night in a gold lamé evening gown and a monocle."
Constance tilted her head and narrowed her eyes; the body language was pure Maura, but whereas on the gentle doctor it looked adorable, on her mother it seemed predatory. "Deal, Jane. I sit on the board of the Metropolitan Opera and did I mention I jumped eleven months' worth of eager couples to secure a cake from La Tulipe. I'm not at all concerned about procuring a room in a garish seaside hotel. In fact, I'll settle myself into a suite of rooms overlooking the bay, so polish your monocle, dear."
Maura gasped. "Mother, the Belvedere is exclusively a men's hotel. They pride themselves on never having had a woman walk through their doors."
Constance laughed, a throaty bark. "That's what they said about the Harvard Club in my grandmother's time, but now I have a reserved table in the Eleanor Roosevelt Room."
Angela peered over the top of her red leather menu, her gaze fixed on a handsome male couple at the next table. She caught the eye of the mustached man facing her, and he offered her a smile and a nod.
"Maura." She hissed behind the cover of the menu. "Do you think he's gay?"
"Yes." She didn't bother looking up. Angela had asked the same question about every man they had passed on the short walk to the restaurant as well as the pianist, bartender and bus boy who had brought over a basket of bread and filled their water glasses.
"But he's so handsome, like an Italian Tom Selleck."
"I think it's safe to assume that every man in Cherry Grove is gay." Kaye reached for a second slice of bread. Her wife, sensing the movement, caught her hand before it reached the bread basket.
"You have the reflexes of a ninja, babe."
"One piece of bread is enough. Carbohydrates are not our friends." The elder physician intoned.
Angela sighed, glancing wistfully between the teeming bread basket and the Italian Tom Selleck who was now holding hands with his partner across their candle lit table.
"Where's Jane? How long does it take to put on a dress? I dragged three suitcases of clothes here for her and she has to run out and buy a different outfit at a boutique?" Angela vented her frustration by grabbing a breadstick and slathering it heavily with butter.
"She ordered that dress before we knew you were coming. I insisted she have one nice outfit for an occasion should it arise, though I never would have imagined we'd be having a pre-wedding dinner this week."
Jane had, in fact, taken extra care with her appearance; digging through the suitcases her mother had brought until she found a pair of panties and a bra that almost matched, blowing out her raven tresses so they fell in a glossy cascade over her shoulders, rimming her dark chocolate eyes with a black pencil and lengthening her lashes with mascara. She told herself that she wanted to look good for Maura, but as she fingered the cheap fabric of a black work suit Angela had thought to pack, she knew she was dressing not for her future wife, but for her future mother-in-law. She contemplated borrowing something from Maura, but Constance would know. A dress that clung to the curvy doctor at mid-thigh would make Jane look as though she were still working vice. There was no helping it, she would have to rely on Carmen Erecta and hope that his vision of Jane as Cher would read as avant-garde to Maura's fashionable mother.
"Oh, Angela, you shoulda seen that drag queen boutique." Kaye pulled out her phone, swiping through a dozen pictures until she came upon one of Jane scowling in her underwear with the hulking figure of Carmen Erecta towering over her, measuring tape in hand.
Angela gasped at the photo, swallowing down the last of her breadstick with a big gulp of wine. "That is one tall gal. If she ever gets tired of sewing, she could have a second career in basketball. She makes Janie look like a shrimp."
Kaye smiled. "No, that's a dude. He's a drag queen."
"Really?" Angela squinted at the phone, turning it this way and that in her hand. Finally remembering the zooming trick, she moved her thumb and forefinger to the screen and spread the image. "I don't see a bulge. What does he do with his dick?"
"He tucks." Kaye answered. "I've seen it hundreds of times when I'd bust a tranny hooker working the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They just stick it all back and tape it up. When you pat them down in the front, you'd think you were dealing with a real lady."
Angela narrowed her eyes. "Tape it up where?"
"In their ass crack."
"Kaye…" Faye laid a corrective hand on her wife's arm.
"What? She asked and I answered."
Maura licked her lips, her desire to add medical fact to the conversation winning out over her sense of decorum. She glanced once at her mother, who had remained uncharacteristically quiet since her unfruitful sojourn to the Belvedere.
"I've seen a few cross dressers on my autopsy table over the years." She began. "I can attest that at first glance, even undressed, the penis and scrotum are indiscernible."
Angela hung on her every word, nodding along, eyes wide.
"The testes are pushed back into the inguinal canal, leaving the scrotum as an empty sac."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Angela asked.
Maura shrugged. "I can't imagine it's very comfortable, but it's not dangerous. Then the scrotal sac is wrapped around the shaft of the penis and the entire member is stretched backwards between the legs and taped, as Kaye noted, in the clunis."
"Hmm." Angela shook her head, and reached for a third breadstick. "And we women think we suffer for beauty."
Constance, awakened from her fog, shot back the tumbler of Dalmore she had been savoring, "Your father liked to wear my panties." She peered nostalgically into her empty glass. "He never taped or tucked anything. Then again, he was not spectacularly endowed."
Maura coughed, thankful that she had swallowed her sip of Malbec. Had she not, it would have spluttered from her mouth or even worse, come out of her nose. Jane would have loved to see that. Where was her fianceé? An image of Jane, panicked by their upcoming nuptials, throwing her a bag over her shoulder and running for the ferry, flashed through Maura's mind.
As if Maura's worried psyche had conjured her, Jane appeared in the doorway. It had to be Jane; the tall, lean figure, the sharply delineated cheekbones, but…Maura's mouth fell open. The detective's mass of ebony curls were hidden by an enormous feathered headdress. Rows of white quills, tipped in turquoise spilled down Jane's back while from her brow crimson and black plumes warred with bits of fur pending from braided leather thongs and elaborate beadwork in the ubiquitous rainbow flag.
Jane stood fidgeting by the bar, pulling at a tawny buckskin loincloth that barely covered her groin, leaving sinewy tan thighs bare above a pair of matching buckskin boots that reached above her knees. Her tight belly peeked out from under a beaded leather vest, cut in a deep v, exposing a tantalizing glimpse of dark areola. Jane pulled the vest to one side and then the other, intent on covering herself, but the sueded doeskin was cut precisely to advertise what the modest detective would rather keep hidden. Eventually she gave up and crossed her arms over her chest.
Maura waved and Jane stalked toward the table, the fierce look in her black eyes was well suited to the war bonnet on her head.
"Oh my God, it's Cher!" A high-pitched male voice called from a corner table. "Pinch me, I'm about to faint."
"That's not Cher. Cher is ten years older than dirt. That's just some skinny drag queen."
The piano player seamlessly wove his uptempo rendition of Gershwin's "Summertime" into Cher's "Half-Breed," the staccato quarter notes mimicking the sound of war drums.
Butthole-Fly rushed to the bar area from the back of the restaurant where he was dining with Barbara and Joan. He was sans drag in a pair of pressed khaki chinos and a yellow sweater vest, yet he moved with the graceful mincing steps of a geisha. He wiped at his brow with the linen dinner napkin still clutched in his hand. Detaching the microphone from its piano top stand, he gestured toward Jane.
"Our own Carmen Erecta has outdone herself. Detective Jane is wearing Carmen's vision of 1970s Cher."
Whistles and catcalls sounded throughout the restaurant. Jane tightened her arms across her chest as the pianist repeated the introductory bars of the song. Butthole-Fly twirled in a tight circle and began to sing,
"My father married a pure Cherokee
My mother's people were ashamed of me
The Indians said that I was white by law
The white man always called me 'Indian Squaw'
Half-breed, that's all I ever heard.
Half-breed, how I learned to hate the word"
Jane reached the table and dropped into the chair opposite her fianceé. Angela was happily singing along, out of tune and a word behind Butthole-Fly.
"I had this album, Janie. I always like Cher, even after she left her nice Italian husband for that dirty hippie."
"Actually…" The Italian Tom Selleck joined their conversation. "…Cher said that she left Sonny for another woman, herself. That's always been one of my favorite quotes." He smiled and raised his wine glass to Angela.
"That's my daughter." Angela confided. "She's gettin' married this week…to a woman, but that's even better: double the wombs, double my chance of grandchildren."
"Congratulations!" Both men raised their glasses, beaming at Jane.
"Thanks." She managed.
Kaye was describing Jane's outfit to her spouse, "She's like a stripper version of Pocahontas about to serve up some kickass to the Pilgrim's on Thanksgiving."
Faye frowned. "That's not accurate, love. Pocahontas was a member of the Appomattoc tribe in tidewater Virginia. The native Americans who interacted with the settlers at Plymouth were Wampanoags."
"They both spoke a dialect of Algonquin." Maura interjected.
"True. Is Jane's costume more indicative of a New England or mid-Atlantic Algonquin tribe?" Faye asked.
Maura took in Jane's apparel with an appraising eye. "Neither. Her war bonnet is Cheyenne in design, perhaps Arapaho, but the pattern of beading is inauthentic to any tribe I've studied."
"It's a rainbow, Maur. It's gay."
Angela leaned closer to her daughter, whispering from the side of her mouth. "You should really wear a bra with that outfit. I hate to tell you, but everyone can see your nippie."
Jane groaned, tucking a dinner napkin into her décollatage. "Ya think?"
Constance snorted, deeply amused by the detective's obvious discomfort. "Jane dear, I do hope you aren't planning on marrying my daughter in that get up."
"Of course she isn't." Angela refilled her wine glass from the bottle of Château Laforge in the center of the table. "She's going to wear my wedding dress. I've been saving it for forty years for this day."
Jane flashed to her parents' wedding photo which graced the small mantel in her childhood home until her father had run off with the blonde thirty-something who answered the phones and balanced the books for his plumbing business. Frank Sr. was grinning nervously in his naval jumper, white cap perched atop his black buzzcut. Angela stood next to him wearing what appeared to be a marshmallow draped in wet toilet paper.
Jane swallowed hard, reaching for the glass of tap water in front of her. She took a deep drink and then another, wracking her brain for a response that would both appease her mother and get her out of wearing that hideous dress. She was saved from responding by Volga, who waddled to their table, ready to take their order. She was trailed by D'Fwan in a pearl grey taffeta evening gown and Sherlock Holmes hat.
"Kojak is still on duty." He winked at Jane.
Angela touched Volga's arm as she turned from the table. "Janie doesn't like any green stuff on top of her food; chives or parsley or anything like that."
"Ma, it's no big deal."
"Yes it is. Nobody wants to hear you grousing and flicking pieces of scallions off of your plate. This is a classy restaurant; they're bound to sprinkle who knows what on top of everything."
Constance hid her smirk behind her whisky glass, but her daughter caught it.
"Studies have shown…" Maura smoothed the white linen napkin in her lap. "…that we are more apt to enjoy eating something that's visually appealing to us."
Jane caught Maura's eye across the table. "I couldn't agree more."
On the way back to Belly Acres they ran into Deirdre and Mercedes, walking arm and arm toward the restaurant.
"Yo, Rizzo! You done good." Mercedes high-fived her.
"Are you mad?" Maura slipped into the small examination room and snicked the door shut behind her.
Jane sighed. "No. I could never be mad at you."
"I really didn't have a choice."
Jane raised an eyebrow. "Constance could have shared a room with my mother. You didn't have to give her our bed."
"Can you imagine my mother sharing a bed with Angela?" Maura tilted her head and smiled at the thought.
"I guess not. It's almost worth it knowing that the great Constance Isles was turned down at the Belvedere."
Jane straightened her spine and picked up a thermometer from the counter, holding it between two fingers like a cigarette, she moved her hand languidly through the air. "I shall have a suite of rooms overlooking the harbor." She managed to capture the locked jaw tone of her future mother-in-law's Boston Brahmin accent.
Maura giggled, covering her mouth. "It was good of you not to tease her about it, Jane. She was very flustered when she returned from the Belvedere."
"I'm sure she was. Constance is used to getting her way."
Jane hoisted herself onto the exam table. "Help me with this head dress, Maur. Carmen used about five million bobby pins to keep it in place."
The doctor ran her fingers under the elaborate feather work, feeling for and removing black pins, dropping each onto an instrument tray on the counter. Her nimble fingers worked fast and efficiently, careful not to snarl a beaded thong in Jane's tresses or prick her scalp with a pin.
"This really is beautifully made, Jane. Carmen Erecta is very talented."
Jane grunted. "I asked for something to wear to dinner and I got a freakin' Halloween costume." She didn't add that the ensemble had set her back a cool five hundred bucks. She hated talking about money with Maura, who would just have smiled gently and offered to buy it for her.
"You could wear it to the BPD Halloween Ball. I imagine you'd win first prize this year."
"Are you insane? I have no desire to be masturbatory fodder for douches like Crowe and Martinez." The head dress came free and Jane shook her locks, scratching both hands across her itching scalp. "I'll be a zombie like I am every year."
"How boring." Maura carefully lay the head dress on top of the counter, making sure that the feathers were all even and none had folded in on themselves.
"Boring? From the woman whose costume is always a set of blue surgical scrubs and a lab coat."
"My instrument changes every year. Last year I carried a speculum; I was a gynecologist. The year before I had an otoscope; I was an ENT. This year I may go completely out of my element and be a dentist."
"Live dangerously, babe." Jane grinned, pulling off her boot. "Where are we going to actually sleep?"
Maura looked around the room. "On the examination table, I suppose."
"Where you performed 55 rectal exams yesterday?"
"56."
"But who's counting?" Jane added, wryly. "I'm tired enough to sleep on an autopsy table."
"I've done that."
"Yes, but you're weird." She approached the doctor and unzipped her dress without being asked. "In a good way, of course."
Maura sighed, slipping out of her emerald sheath to reveal a matching set of spruce green panties and bra.
"You're amazing." Jane's gaze feasted on a creamy swell of buttocks just peaking out below the green lace of her future wife's panties. She was definitely a breast man, but at times like this she felt she could write a sonnet about Maura's ass; its perfect roundness, the pliancy of the flesh under her fingertips like the finest sueded silk.
"Really?" Maura carefully smoothed out her dress and hung it on a velvet lined hanger on the back of the door under her crisp white lab coat. "I thought I was weird."
"Weird and amazing. I don't think I've ever seen you in a mismatched set of lingerie."
Maura smirked. "I'm sure you haven't. It would be…" She bit her lip. "…distressing to me. I'd have trouble concentrating."
"If your bra and panties didn't match?"
"Yes."
"So the wheels of justice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would stop turning if you accidentally grabbed a pair of ecru panties and a bisque brassiere on a dark morning?"
"Probably." Maura poked her in the ribs. "I can't wait to see what you have under your apparel."
"My apparel? Aren't you going to use the proper Native American word for it? You're slipping Dr. Isles."
Maura narrowed her eyes. "Native American tribes lived from the tip of Alaska to the Florida Keys. Their languages and dialects are more numerous and varied than their European counterparts. There is no one word for clothing."
"Mmm-hmm." Jane taunted. "Maybe you're just not up on Indian etama-hoosis."
"I'm not fluent in any Native American languages, but…"
Jane gasped in mock surprise. "You're not?"
"…but," Maura continued. "…the Cherokee word for clothing is dinuwosdi whereas the Seminole word is ayacophela. The two have absolutely no etymological connection."
Jane extracted herself from her buckskin loincloth and flung it over the back of a chair. "No connection, huh?"
"None, just like your undergarments; your grey underwear is in no way connected to your white tube socks with the green and yellow stripes. You're not wearing a bra, but I'm sure that wouldn't match either."
"Does that offend your sensibilities?"
Maura wrinkled her nose. "The socks are really awful, Jane."
"These are my lucky Celtics socks. I had to wear something high under those boots."
"Take them off."
"No way. I don't want my bare feet coming into contact with that table and any lingering ass sweat that might be on it."
"Off, Jane."
Maura draped the table with a white exam sheet and Jane reluctantly boosted herself up, peeling off her lucky socks. She flung them to the side where they snagged on the edge of an
x-ray view box and hung there swinging limply in the breeze from the office's overhead fan.
The doctor slipped out of her bra and panties, flicked off the light and gingerly climbed up beside Jane, covering them both with another exam sheet.
"Cozy. If either of us turns over in our sleep, we'll both wind up on the floor."
"Make the best of it, Jane. Tomorrow we'll see if we can find a room somewhere for my mother. Millie-Joyce has that entire house to herself. I'm sure she would be amenable…"
"Really, Maur? You trust your mother alone with Ming?"
"Constance can take care of herself; she's no ingénue."
"If you say so." Jane yawned. "This has been a whale of a day."
A whale, not a narwhal. The doctor pondered the troublesome idiom as she rested her head on Jane's clavicle. Her heartbeat was slow and strong, comforting.
"A week from today we'll be married." She whispered into the darkness.
"Mmm." Jane was already half asleep. "…not spending my wedding night on your rectal table."
"Certainly not."
A moment later the woman's breathing became soft and regular, her chest rising and falling gently under Maura's cheek. Maura ran a hand down a lean ribcage, the skin warm and taut under the pads of her fingers. She moved in closer, easing her leg over Jane's hard thigh and letting her hand come to rest on a jutting hipbone. She regulated her breath until it was in sync with Jane's, their chests rising and falling in tandem.
She opened her eyes in the unlit room and waited for her pupils to adjust to the darkness. She could, after a moment, just make out the sharp planes of her beloved's face; her strong jaw, the dimple in her chin, an errant curl of raven hair fallen across tender lips and wavering slightly as Jane exhaled. Maura smiled and returned her cheek to her fianceé's chest.
A subtle movement across the room caught her attention. She raised her head and squinted into the darkness. Jane's singularly ugly tube socks were hanging from the corners of her x-ray viewer, like Christmas stockings waiting to be filled, swaying in time to the slow rotation of the ceiling fan. She shook her head and relaxed back into Jane's warm torso.
Christmas stockings. Her mind flitted back to the first year of their friendship.
An Italian-American Christmas Eve; it was a revelation to the quiet doctor. When her father had been alive, the Isles Family would dine together at her parents' townhouse or at the restaurant in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental and then go their separate ways. Constance and Terrance Isles always spent the week between Christmas and New Year's in the Maldives and their flight left early Christmas morning. After Terrance's death, Constance preferred to spend the holidays alone in Paris or Geneva or Maura didn't even know. She dutifully called her daughter to wish her well and never forgot to send a gift; a donation in Maura's name to one of the charities Maura cared about: Médecins Sans Frontières or The Boston Women's Clinic.
The doctor had long since accustomed herself to spending Christmas Eve alone; she would cook a favorite meal, indulge in a bottle of Haut-Brion from her own reserve and listen to Rostropovich playing Bach's Cello Suites. Christmas day would find her cleaning out her closets before relaxing with a Grand Marnier and a book of New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles.
Christmas Eve with the Rizzolis was anything but relaxing. Maura was not yet used to the loud, affectionate way the family spoke to one another.
"Hey dipshit, don't hog all the baccala." Frank Sr. whacked Tommy on the back of the head, then with the same hand, pulled him close and planted a kiss in the part of his hair.
"Janie, you keep shoveling in that calamari, you're gonna shit in your pants."
"Ma!" Jane growled, a deep fried squid tentacle hanging from her lips. "We have company."
"What? Your friend doesn't think you shit? Last Thanksgiving…"
Jane shot her mother a murderous look across the table and the Rizzoli matriarch fell silent, only to have her story finished by Frankie. "Jane guzzled turkey gravy right from the pot and she shit in her pants."
The family roared and Jane picked up a loaf of Italian bread and wailed it across the table at her younger brother.
Maura sat with her hands folded in her lap, a polite smile hiding her discomfort. She had long since grown used to them, come to love them, but that first Christmas Eve was a baptism by fire.
After dinner and several bottles of Nero D'Avola, the family settled in the living room to snooze with the television on, ESPN's Sport Center blaring loudly, though no one was really paying attention. Maura placed an envelope beneath the tree. She was unsure what to get her friend's family, but her gift of tickets to a Patriots game had been well received.
"Maur…" Jane came up behind her, hands shoved nervously in her pockets. "I know it's not even snowing, but I kept checking the weather channel all week, hoping it would."
The doctor tilted her head in confusion.
"I…I wanted you to have an excuse to stay over. You know, if the roads were dangerous and you shouldn't drive."
"The roads are fine, Jane. I'll just get my coat."
"No…I want you to stay so you can open your stocking tomorrow morning with me."
Open her stocking? Maura had no idea what that meant. She wasn't wearing stockings. She had agonized over what to wear to Christmas Eve dinner and had finally decided that casual was best when it came to Jane and her family. She wore a simple red sweater with a cowl neck and black pleated trousers. Her ensemble was completed with a pair of modest heeled boots.
The confusion must have shown in her face because Jane grinned and squeezed her arm. "Your Christmas stocking."
"Oh…I…" Maura glanced at the paper cut out of a fireplace above which hung three empty red felt stockings, the names Jane, Frankie and Tommy were written in glittery letters down their fronts.
"Ma waits until we go to sleep and then fills them for us to open Christmas morning. Don't worry; your stocking is downstairs in my apartment and it's already stuffed." Jane smiled.
"Who, um, stuffed it?" Maura had already decided to stay and was following Jane down the brown carpeted staircase to her parents' basement where she had recently taken up residence, having given up her childhood bedroom upstairs.
Jane turned to her and raised an eyebrow. "Santa Claus."
She was awakened early by a rough shove to her shoulder and Jane's warm breath in her ear. "Wake up, Maur, it's stocking time."
Jane leaped from the bed, an unusual action for the detective who was decidedly not a morning person, and returned with an enormous red knit stocking, so stuffed full of gifts that it resembled more a sack of potatoes than footwear. She laid it on the comforter next to the doctor and bounded back onto the bed to sit cross-legged in her Scooby Doo pajamas, staring at Maura in anticipation.
"Open it." She squeaked, her voice rising half an octave with excitement.
Maura sat up in bed, conscious of her morning breath, the fullness of her bladder and the way her sleep-tousled hair stuck up at odd angles, but looking at the pure joy shining from her friend's dark eyes, she put her self-consciousness aside.
"How does one do this?"
"Well…Frankie and I like to take things out one at a time, but Tommy spills the whole thing in front of him and digs through the pile. It's your choice."
Maura rolled up the overly long sleeve of the flannel pajamas she borrowed from Jane, laughing reindeers on a green background interspersed with red Ho Ho Hos danced up her arm. She reached for the bulging stocking and pulled out a three pack of cherry chapstick.
"Oh…how thoughtful."
Jane smiled. "Stockings are full of little gifts. Things that you use every day. Santa wants you to know that he's always thinking of you and wants your, uh, your lips to be…um never mind."
Maura nodded her understanding and reached in again; a package of emery boards, a pair of warm woolen socks, neon pink mittens, a Rubik's cube, three travel-sized bottles of Grand Marnier, a bag of Lindt dark chocolates, ear muffs, an Irish Tenors compact disk, a coffee mug featuring a grinning dog and the words "Merry Christmutt," a purse-sized umbrella, a gift card for Boston Joe's coffee shop, a Swiss Army knife, a travel-sized chess set, a bottle of vitamin C, a tube of hand sanitizer, a box of Band-Aids (Hello Kitty), a block of Pecorino Romano wrapped in cellophane, a package of dental floss, a pack of Trident Cinnamon gum, a tin of Altoids, a tortoise keychain from the Boston Zoo, a jar of blackberry preserves, a pomegranate, a roll of scotch tape, a tiny pair of folding scissors, a travel-sized sewing kit, a pen and pencil set, a vanilla scented candle, a personal fan, a package of assorted batteries, two bottles of Advil, nail polish remover, a bag of Christmas-themed refrigerator magnets, the first season of Roseanne on dvd, three strawberry car air fresheners, a tire pressure gauge, a wine bottle stopper, and a set of road flares all emerged from the depths of the stocking.
Maura was overwhelmed by the thought that went into the eclectic heap of gifts in front of her. Her eyes filled with tears. "Thank you, Jane. Thank you."
She fell asleep murmuring into Jane's neck. "Thank you, Jane. Thank you for loving me."