Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories Read online

  “I’m Caroline,” I said. “I offered to neck with you at Stephanie’s last wedding and you turned me down.”

  “Good to know you don’t hold a grudge.” He slid a bowl of peanuts down to me.

  I took them as a peace offering and crunched a couple while I looked him over. Men like this do not grow on trees, so I tried again. “Still not interested?”

  “Nope.” He squinted back over his shoulder at David and Steph cutting the cake. “Exactly what criteria does your sister use to pick husbands, aside from shopping in my family?”

  “Breathing and interested in her.” I draped myself over the bar and tried to look interested in him, which shouldn’t have been hard because I was, but then as my father says, I’m all mouth but no moves. Scott didn’t seem to notice, so I gave up and went for the truth.

  “So why aren’t you interested in me?” I know this sounds like I’m pushy, but you don’t know how hard it is to find a guy my father won’t make fun of.

  “I’m gay,” Scott said.

  “Oh, hell,” I said, and he got me another daiquiri, and we discussed what a great butt one of the waiters had and which one of us had a better chance of picking him up. We put five bucks on it. I lost, of course, but I had a good time anyway which is a vast improvement over Steph’s last wedding.

  So like I said, I don’t think I’m cut out for this marriage bit, even if I could find a guy my father wouldn’t refer to as “somebody your sister would marry.” After all, I’ve got a big career in law ahead of me, and I’m going to be great. I have to be. My father won’t speak to me again if I’m not.

  That’s a joke.

  1983

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Scott says.

  We are, of course, at my sister’s wedding. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other, Scott and I, and he has turned out to be everything I could wish for in a man except for that tiny little problem about our non-matching sexualities. There are some good things about this. As Scott says, at least when he stays over with me, nobody has to sleep on the wet spot, but I’d be willing. On the other hand, this is a great relationship, so who am I to bitch? It’s certainly lasted longer than any of Steph’s previous three.

  Yeah, three. This is her fourth wedding, sixteen years after her first, which I know because I was a smart-mouthed fifteen-year-old then and I’m a smart-mouthed thirty-one now. We cannot blame the second divorce on David although, as my father says, irreconcilable boredom should be grounds. David was everything he’d promised to be: secure, hard-working, responsible, and a great father when Jess arrived a year after they were married. That’s her, the eleven-year-old over there in the seafoam green flower girl dress, swatting the ring bearer with her basket. My kind of kid. But then four years passed, and according to David’s timetable, it was long past time to produce another kid. He started pressuring Steph, and she just freaked.

  She came out of Kroger’s one day and got run down by this guy on a motorcycle, and when he picked her up off the pavement, she got on the bike with him and rode off. I think after marrying twice for potential, Steph just looked at Cam and thought, “This is all he’ll ever be, a hunk on a motorcycle,” and went for the Moment the way Mom had always taught her. Jess was at Mom’s, so Steph called and left a message that she’d be home late. They came back two weeks later. They’d had the urge to go to Mexico, Steph said, so they went, and she got a quickie divorce and then a quickie marriage (my mother had to lie down at that part) and now she was really, truly happy.

  Right.

  I tried to talk her into letting me get her an annulment right away. Any fool who looked at Cam knew he was worthless, but all Steph could see was the romance. That was fine when all Steph was screwing up was herself, but she had a kid now.

  My niece Jess is great.

  In fact, the only good thing about Steph’s elopement was that I got to spend every evening of the entire two weeks with Jess who was only two at the time and who was a little freaked out that her mother had disappeared. Steph and David had tried to raise the kid to be another Stepford bride, but I saved her. Steph used to read her crap like Cinderella, and Jess would point to the pictures and say “’Rella” and “p’ince,” and Steph would tell her how cute she was. By the time Steph got back from Mexico, Jess was pointing and saying “loser” and “wimp.” Steph was not amused, but I pointed out that a mother who deserts her child to elope to Mexico wasn’t much of a role model, either. I was already in trouble with Steph because when she had introduced Jess to Cam, his unfortunate resemblance to the Disney prince made Jess point at him and say, “Wimp.” My mother said, “She’s just like her Aunt Caroline,” and I looked at this kid who had Steph’s face and my mouth and said, “Behold the master race.”

  My father laughed until he choked, but Steph didn’t.

  I also pointed out to Steph that her Mexican divorce was illegal, which is when I started pushing for the annulment, but it turned out to be not much of a problem because Cam did not last the year. Stephanie said she fell in love with him because he was deep and free-spirited. She stopped speaking to me for a week after the memorable family dinner at which Cam passed out with his head in the lasagna, and I felt behooved to mention that deep was not the same as brain dead, which was what chemical substances had evidently rendered Cam. Fortunately, shortly after that, Stephanie saw the light, and Cam saw the door, and Steph was 0 for 3: 1967, 1971, and 1976. Steph came close to trying it again several times in the seven years after her divorce from Cam (which I handled brilliantly, I must say; I may suck as a sister but I’m a great lawyer), but every time she brought somebody home as a candidate, my father would say, “Look at that tie,” and I’d say, “Boring,” and Jess would say, “Wimp,” and she’d drop him and start over.

  Then a couple of months ago, she brought home Paul, and my father said, “Look at that tie,” and I said, “Boring,” but Jess said, “I like him,” and so here we go again, up to our butts in chiffon, cake, and colored punch.

  Of course, Steph being Steph, Cam is, as my father says, forgotten but not gone. That’s him over there by the buffet, moving across the stuffed mushrooms like a locust. And yes, you’re right, that’s Andy hitting on Darla the bridesmaid again (and that’s Darla’s husband Max about to put Andy’s head in the punch), and there’s David boring the caterer. My sister is not the type to hold a grudge. Or, as far as I can tell, a memory. As my father says, all of Steph’s ex-husbands should be grateful to her because for most of them, her weddings provide their only social outlet.

  I have plenty of social outlets. Lawyers are supposed to schmooze, and since I’m the hottest thing in my firm, I schmooze like nobody else, but my real social life is Scott. He is the only successful relationship I’ve ever had with a male, not counting my father, which is not to say that I haven’t had relationships. Oh, God, let me count the ways. But at least I don’t marry the sociopaths I sleep with. Unlike Steph, I have some standards.

  Which is why I’m on the sidelines of another in a series of weddings brought to you by my sister, designed by my mother, and paid for by a grant from my father. When he mentioned that he thought two weddings might be the legal limit required from any parent for any individual daughter, I offered Steph my two. I won’t be using them, and this way, she’ll have one to spare after this one goes belly up. Besides my mother hadn’t done a wedding in twelve years, and she was due. She went all out; this time we’re “Under the Sea” which means we’re all draped in sea foam green chiffon, not only are there starfish in the bouquets but I also have one stuck to the side of my head, something that Scott finds hysterically funny. That’s me, anything for a laugh.

  The good news is that this damn chiffon is the color of daiquiris, which means that my mother’s punch is literally laying them in the aisles. I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do for Steph’s fifth wedding.

  Although there might not be a fifth; Scott swears this one is going to last. Paul is a plumber, which is a little blue-