Relatively Speaking

Ed’s sister Allison flew out here with our niece Courtney to pick out a bridesmaid’s dress.  All she’d had to do for Courtney’s brother Dylan was to send us his size for his tux.  She wasn’t pleased about the purple vest and asked if it had been “Pastor Parker’s” idea.

Cilla piped up, “She’s not a pastor; she’s a priest.  You can call her Mother Parker or Mother Kate or just Kate.  We call her Aunt Kate.”

I wasn’t sure if Cilla had been fresh or was just trying to be helpful.  Betsey’s opinion of Allison is “She’s such a big moron, Mother,” and Cilla has never disagreed with her.  I’d spent fifteen minutes talking to the kids about being respectful and gracious to guests and having good manners.  I would have said more, but their eyes had started to glaze over.

Then Cilla got an idea.  “Can we call Aunt Kate ‘Grandma’ after she gets married?  Please!  Please!  Please!”  (When Cilla asks if she can have another cookie, she says “Please!  Please!  Please!”)

“You’ll have to ask her, but I think she’d like that.”

Allison looked like she wanted to say something like her children had three grandmothers already (Janet, Allison’s husband Tony’s mother, and her father’s second wife, Missy), thank you very much, but Cilla started asking if she could please, please, please call Aunt Kate and ask her right away. 

 I said “Sure,” to her and to Allison, “Cilla is so intense.  It’s rather sweet, really.”  I don’t know if she believed me.  I’m sure she didn’t agree. 

K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple. Sure!)

Of course, Janet and Kate made the obligatory disclaimers that the wanted a simple wedding.  Of course, nobody believed them.  And besides, once the news got out, Kate’s parishioners got together to plan it.  They were looking at it as a political act as well as a chance to go more High Church than ever. 

As de facto mother of the brides (Kate’s parents are dead and she doesn’t have any children) my job was to supervise things, which consisted of saying, “Terrific.”  One of Kate’s parishioners is a wedding planner.  Once in a while I would say, “How much is it?”  and he would tell me not to worry about it; it was a present or he was getting a fabulous deal.

Naturally Cilla and Betsey would sit in for a bit and soon Cilla was saying everything was “fabulous.”   Pretty soon I was saying it too.  The reception was going to be in the parish hall, with spillover outside, parishioners were making the food, and there would be a DJ.  Kate knows so many musicians, she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.  And as Janet said “You can’t dance to that folky women’s music stuff anyway.”  Kate said, nonsense;  she knew women whose groups did rock and punk and even rap.  Janet said she was sorry to miss that, but of course, you couldn’t step on any toes, even if they were in motorcycle boots. 

Major debates were:

Should we use Epiphany’s dishes and silver or get paper and plastic?  Which would be prettier? (Paper and plastic.)  Which was better the environment? (Who knows?  Think of the water and electricity to wash them.)  But paper and plastic won, because they were more convenient.  Kate said she could pay people to come in to do the dishes, but Janet said that someone would be sure to say something about exploiting the workers.  (I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t.)   Anyway, we didn’t know for sure which was better.

Color scheme:

Lavender, or course.  But should the bridesmaids, Betsey and Allison’s daughter Courtney, wear that or white?  Cilla, the flower girl would wear white with a lavender sash.  On our first shopping trip,  all we found was white.  Cilla said it would just like Princess Kate’s wedding.  Should the tuxedos for Ed, Josh, and Allison’s son Dylan have lavender ties and vests?  We decided on dark purple.

Cake topper:

Two brides, two women’s symbols, a heart with the equal sign in the middle?  Janet suggested two teddy bear brides, but Kate said that was too cutesy; how about two dinosaur or Godzilla brides?  We finally decided on a dog and cat bride.  As Tony, the wedding planner pointed out, it would make good conversation talking about who was the dog and who was the cat.  (Dear Reader:  What do you think?  Click on “No comment.”)

I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

 

 

The Fortunate Consequences of Too Much Information

Ever since gay marriage became legal in our state, the kids (well, Betsey and Cilla) have been after Janet and Kate to get married.  Janet’s excuse was that she didn’t want to live in the Rectory, even though she seems to be there all the time.

But now, after all the publicity has made it clear that Janet and Kate are a couple, the church ladies at Epiphany have been taking them aside and saying “Don’t you think you should get married, dear?”  One of the teenage girls told Kate that she had to set an example.  Naturally, Kate couldn’t bring out the old “it’s just a piece of paper” argument, since it’s part of her job to refute this whenever a couple brings it up.

So it looks like I’m going to be the mother of the brides, or at least one of them.  Ed’s sister Allison lives 600 miles away and she and Janet have what I call a “prickly” relationship.  Ed has stronger words for it.

“How does she feel about Kate?”  Nikki asked me when I told her and Karen about it.

“Well, whenever she talks to her mother on the phone, she asks how ‘Pastor Parker’ is, which she knows isn’t right.  A priest is either Father, Mother, Dr., Mr. Mrs., Ms., Miss or first name.  At family stuff, she talks to her, but doesn’t call her anything.”

“I never knew what to call Tom’s mother, so I haven’t called her anything for fifteen years” Karen said.  “I don’t think she’s noticed.”

“Plus, she never forgave her mother for the divorce,” I added.

“But I thought he left her for another woman.” 
               

“He did, and that’s why Ed can’t figure it out.”  (Frankly, I think the only time it occurred to Ed to try to figure it out was when I asked him about it.)

“Allison is unconsciously afraid that because her mother couldn’t hold onto her husband, she won’t be able to either,” Nikki explained.  “And she takes it out on her.  Not to mention the classic mother-daughter rivalry.”

Ed said he was relieved to have everything clarified when I explained it to him.

Move Over, Miss Marple

The new evidence started everyone talking again.  Once again I was the Queen of Coffee Hour, since everyone wanted to know who I thought the murderer was.  I felt guilty that I didn’t have anything to offer. 

Karen, Nikki, and I decided to imitate those soccer moms in the mystery books who are always getting together to eat and solve murders.  Usually they have confrontations with the perpetrator and almost get killed, but we decided to ignore that.  We made a list of places Margaret could have met the killer.  (As Nikki pointed out, even if Margaret had used “he,” she could have done it just as a further cover-up.  So I still wasn’t in the clear.)

Of course there was the college and the library.  And the Methodist church.  Maybe it was a neighbor.  We decided to go through the college yearbook.  Karen, who really likes to throw herself into things, decided that she could check out the Methodist church.  She’d been thinking that maybe her boys could use some religious training.  Nikki would check out the neighborhood and chat with some of the workers in the stores.

“What was her type?” Nikki asked. 

I thought.  “The actors she liked were Anthony Hopkins, Peter Lawford, and William Powell.”

“Who’s he?”

“He played Nick Charles in the old Thin Man movies.”

“Oh, I love them,” Karen said.  “And Peter Lawford played him on TV in the fifties.  My mother has a bunch of DVD’s of the series.”

“I love Peter Lawford.  He was Laurie in Little Women.  Liz Taylor got him”

“I never liked that version.”

We all agreed that Peter Lawford was the only good thing in the ‘fifties Little Women.

“So, anyway,” Karen got us back to business, “She liked Nick Charles and Dr. Lector.  I wonder how that affected her sex life?”  And she made the fava bean noise from Silence of the Lambs.

I wanted to laugh, but then I remembered that we were talking about this because my friend had been murdered.

“But Anthony Hopkins played Richard the Lionhearted in The Lion in Winter.”

“But what do we remember him for? “  She had a point.

“So we’ve got debonair charm or smoldering menace.”

“Hello, Margaret.” And she made the fava bean sound again.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, shiver, or cry.

We’re going to do our separate investigations.  I don’t know how much information we’ll find, but maybe Karen will find Jesus. I’d been worried that her boys didn’t go to Sunday School.

I may not have much time for detective work.  Kate and Janet are going to get married and it looks like I’m going to be the de facto mother of the brides!