“Time to go!” I helped Lindsey to her feet. “Know what’s better than dancing? Sobriety!”
“And curvy cocks.”
“Of course.” I handed Lindsey to the other bridesmaids, and they helped me out the door. “I’m sure genital deformities are just as fun as getting a big cup of coffee and sitting quietly!”
Our limo returned the party to Mom’s house, but I’d borrowed Dad’s SUV to haul all seven of us to the Washington’s cabin for Lindsey’s bridal-dance boot-camp. Not that I didn’t trust a limo to off-road it along the cabin’s dirt path, but I wasn’t getting stranded without four wheel drive anywhere Lindsey couldn’t access Pinterest.
“Road trip!” Lindsey’s excitement was short-lived. She tripped trying to hop into the SUV, and her butt sprawled onto the gravel.
Her howl woke the neighborhood. Worse, it woke Mom.
“Oh no! My hand!” Lindsey shrieked. “I hurt my hand!”
The bridesmaids tumbled out of the SUV, spilling onto the driveway in a pile of tiaras, feather boas, and vodka. I raced to my sister, avoiding a slap as she thrust her hands towards me.
I groaned. She had a little scrape over her fingers. It rubbed raw where the engagement ring rested, but Lindsey screamed like she amputated it with a bayonet on a World War I battlefield.
Mom’s front door opened.
This wasn’t going to be good.
Our larger-than-life mother raced outside in a robe and nothing else. I loved my mom for taking pride in the natural endowment the Lord saw fit to give her, but those ta-tas thundered every which way but symmetrically as she raced to Lindsey.
“Oh Jesus have mercy. Look at your hands!” Mom tied her robe closed, but not everything tucked inside.
My sister and I stared in shared horror at our mother’s heaving bosom.
When and why did she get a tattoo of a snake wearing a helmet?
And why was it curled so obscenely around Mom’s nipple?
Lindsey yelped first. Oh god. The tattoo wasn’t a snake.
It wasn’t a snake at all…
“Mandy, how could you?” Mom snapped at me.
I couldn’t look away from the slithery penis tattoo curled to engulf what was once a chocolate chip before two babies flattened it into a pancake.
“What did I do?” I covered my eyes.
“Why didn’t you help your sister into the car?”
“Because she’s twenty-eight years old?”
“You have a responsibility to her! She’s tipsy!”
She wasn’t tipsy, she was one shot away from black-out. I knew better than to correct Mom. The last thing she needed to hear was stories about her daughter, a Vice officer, and a very crude rendition of Let It Go in reference to her bladder.
“Mom, what about my pictures?” Lindsey hiccupped. “I’m supposed to take pictures with my ring on Monday!”
It was one in the morning, and the baby drained every last bit of energy from me. I was sick, hungry, tired, and my head hurt. God forbid we saved two hundred dollars by not commissioning pictures specifically for her engagement ring.
“Now you don’t have to shove your hand in strangers’ faces.” I grabbed a bottle of water from the hatch and poured it over my sister’s hands. She was barely scratched and would live…unless a weekend with her finally broke me. I herded the drunken bridesmaids into the SUV. “Get in the car, Linds. We have an hour and a half trip.”
“How dare you?” Lindsey appealed to Mom. “Did you hear her?”
“Mandy, show some compassion,” Mom scolded. “And after Lindsey stood up for you this week!”
I shouldn’t have asked. “Now what did I do?”
“You cut your hair without asking Lindsey!”
“Without…” I tugged on my shorter locks. Here I thought I’d look cute, something to take my mind off of the wedding, Nate, and the baby. Instead I caused some sort of inter-family drama for a twenty dollar cut. “Why would I ask Lindsey?”
Lindsey stomped a foot. “For the wedding, freakface!”
Too much. “Get in the car.”
“You didn’t even ask if you could cut off what…seven inches of hair?”
“Four. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal!” Lindsey sniffled. “You have no respect for me, for this wedding, for the beauty we’re trying to create. You are the worst sister. Just once I want you to think of me first!”
Right. Because keeping the secret of my lifetime to spare the family any drama during the wedding wasn’t enough. If she only knew how much I needed her, how I wished my big sister would tell me everything was okay and that we’d get through it.