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“Where did you get that?” Brenda said to Maria.
“It’s your wedding dress, Grandma,” Maria said, smiling bravely. “I’m wearing it for my wedding.”
“My wedding dress?” Brenda said, her pretty face darkening.
“Where’s my Italian lace? Where’s my bouffant sleeves? Where’s my goddamn hoop skirt?”
The same place as your goddamned morals, you worthless tramp. “It’s been modernized, Brenda,” Agnes said. “When you pass something on to someone else, you have to expect changes. You don’t get it back.”
Brenda glared at Agnes. “I can expect my wedding dress to stay my goddamn wedding dress.”
“Ma, it’s beautiful,” Lisa Livia said. “Evie and her dressmaker worked on it all night. We’re really grateful. All of us.”
Brenda turned on her, glaring. “Well, I’m not grate?—”
The air was split with the sound of honking, frantic honking, as if a giant duck were being turned inside out, and Agnes said, “What the hell?” and shoved Brenda out of the way to see what was going on.
There was a deliveryman on her back lawn setting loose a large pink bird.
“What is that?” Agnes went out through the screen door and down toward the bird as it broke free of its crate and bolted for the river. It was at least five feet tall, and while she actually did know what it was, she was having trouble accepting the fact.
“Delivery for Maria Fortunato and Palmer Keyes,” the delivery-man said, giving up on catching the bird. “They here?”
“Maria!” Agnes yelled, but Maria was right behind her. “Did you order a flamingo?”
“No,” Maria said, staring at the bird as it loped, honking, toward the water, but she signed for it when the uniformed chinless wonder with the blond crew cut jabbed the clipboard at her. Then he handed her an envelope and drove off, leaving the crate and the bird behind as he made Agnes’s bridge groan again in his getaway.
“That’s a flamingo,” Lisa Livia said, coming up behind them as Maria opened the envelope, and Agnes said, “Yes, it is,” staring in equal disbelief.
“It’s a wedding gift from Downer,” Maria said, reading the papers from the envelope, and her inflection on “Downer” told them all they needed to know about how she felt about Palmer’s best man. “Its name is Cerise.”
“What in God’s name?” Doyle said, and Agnes turned to see him and Garth crossing the lawn, gaping at the bird, which was still honking frantically, now knee deep in the Blood River.
“Flamingo,” she told him. “How’s that house painting coming?”
“We need sprayers,” Garth said. “That’s a flamingo. Hot damn.”
“They eat shrimp,” Maria said, still reading the papers. “What are we going to do with a flamingo?” Her voice quivered on flamingo, and Agnes realized that after the dress and her grandmother, the big pink bird was probably the last straw.
“Jimbo can get us all the shrimp we want,” Garth said, and Agnes took the papers out of Maria’s hands and gave them to him.
“You are now chief flamingo wrangler,” she told him. “Take care of Cerise until we figure out where she belongs so we can send her back. Feed her lots of shrimp. Maybe that will shut her up.”
“Cool,” Garth said.
“And paint the house,” Agnes added.
“On it,” Garth said, and was gone.
Agnes turned to Maria. “You really do look beautiful in that dress, honest to God, and the flamingo will be gone by your wedding, I swear.”
Maria nodded, trying to smile, and then Agnes turned to the rest of the group, raising her voice to be heard above the honking.
“So, who’s for a mint julep?” It wasn’t quite ten yet, but it was definitely turning into a drink-your-brunch day. If Cerise didn’t shut up soon, she was going to get a julep, too. With a syringe if necessary.
Evie shook her head, trying to look away from the flamingo and failing. “Thank you, Agnes, but I’m going home to bed.” She finally tore her eyes away, kissed Maria on the cheek, halfway between a real kiss and an air kiss, smiled weakly at Lisa Livia and Brenda, and tottered off to her Lexus.
“She’s startin’ to show her age, bless her heart,” Brenda said with satisfaction.
