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I can’t remember the last time my mother touched me so affectionately. That I allowed her to.
Air kisses, yes. Holding my arm as we entered a gala, yes. Resting this same hand on my jacketed shoulder to show public display of pride at my business acumen in a room full of employees, yes.
But affection?
Hoping any accumulated moisture can be excused by the swelling of my eye and not my unnerving emotional state, I clear my throat.
‘The shape of the bruise…’ Mother squints, tilting her head to the side as if that will help her make out the phallic impression on my face. And what with the various neon signs, spotlights, glitter and rhinestones to rival the Hope Diamond’s reflective facets, it might actually work.
I tilt my head to the left, my injury out of her line of sight. ‘Why did you lie about Liz?’
She drops her hand. ‘I didn’t actually lie.’
I let my lack of expression speak for itself.
Mother sighs, looking far more her age than she had minutes earlier as she danced out of the hotel unconcerned with her damp outfit, the crowd’s general displeasure or her complete lack of propriety as she specifically asked the concierge for more Blow Job shots to be handed out to the guests as a way of apology. ‘She needed time, and I knew you wouldn’t give it to her if I told you where she was heading.’
‘And where was that?’
‘You’ll have to ask her.’ She raises an eyebrow in return of my own. ‘I’m not lying. I am saying I do know where she’s been, but I don’t feel it’s my place to say.’ She pats my arm, back to the distant warmth that we’re used to. ‘She’s okay, Thomas. I promise.’
‘Hmmm.’ I scan the sidewalk looking for a blonde female sporting French braid pigtails, as only my sister would do in Vegas, but while my eyes land on Chase clutching Mike to his chest in a stranglehold while throwing I-love-you-eyes at Bell and then on George patting a tear-streaked stripper on the back, Liz is not to be found.
‘She left with Alice and Leslie to book a table at a nearby restaurant.’
Alice. I realize that while I told myself I was looking for blonde braids, I’d also been looking for uneven strands of black/brown hair. Then the rest of what Mother said registers. ‘A restaurant.’ I cut my eyes to her. ‘Why?’
Giving me the innocent eye flutter that she’d passed on to her second son, Mother smooths down her dampened silk blouse. ‘To continue the bachelorette party, of course.’
I blink. Or try to. It’s feels more like a spastic twitch. ‘You’re going to continue?’
‘Of course.’ She waves down a hotel staff member circulating through the crowd with a tray full of whipped cream shots. ‘We can’t let the party end on such a sad note.’
‘Sad?’ I fight to remain calm. Or, at least, appear calm, because since stepping into the TSA security line at LaGuardia, I’ve felt everything but calm. ‘You call the perverted combination of strippers, penis candles, Blow Job shots and a demonic cat setting fire to a hotel suite sad?’
She plucks a shot off the tray with two fingers, pinky up. ‘What would you call it, dear?’
‘A sign. A sign that this whole destination wedding was a huge mistake. That Vegas was a huge mistake.’
The staff member’s practiced smile melts in the face of my spastic eye twitching and he shuffles off, not bothering to offer me a glass.
Mother raises her hand yet again and waves to George, a few hotel-guest clusters over. ‘I really don’t understand what you have against a city that you’ve never been to.’
George says something to his stripper friend and hastens over, weaving through the crowd.
‘Las Vegas is a city where inhibitions fall away.’ My lips barely move as I mutter. ‘It’s what you and the rest of the bridal party seem to find charming about this hellish place.’
She licks the whipped cream off the shot. ‘I take it you do not?’
Averting my gaze, as no one should see their mother take a Blow Job shot, my one good eye burns as I stare into the neon forest. ‘Inhibitions are there for a reason. They keep one properly restrained. Hinder unsavory frivolity.’
She coughs. But not from the whipped cream. There’s a twinkle in her eye which makes me suspect she’s holding back a laugh. ‘Unsavory frivolity?’
I find nothing amusing about the day’s situations, piling up like bricks being used to build a den of iniquity. ‘If you’d prefer laymen’s terms – inhibitions keep one from making an ass of oneself.’ My nose flares as I catch sight of Chase trying to stuff his cat up his shirt. ‘Something our family could do less of.’
I gesture to the crowd of drunk hotel guests, the menage of Las Vegas strip walkers and performers lining the sidewalk. ‘Las Vegas is apparently the Moore family’s inferno.’ I stab myself in the chest. ‘And I’m left playing Dante, trying to figure a way out of this hellhole while the rest of you dance in the flames.’
‘I never knew you could be so dramatic, dear.’ She assesses me as if seeing me for the first time. ‘Why are you so concerned with all this?’
