Miss Impractical Pants (3 page)

“What? What’s the matter?” Heather demanded.

Christopher dashed down the corridor toward the groom’s dressing room.

“We try not to leave Christopher parents alone together,” Katie informed her. “They still have a lot of unresolved issues. Sometimes it turns into a screaming match and Sheila storms off, crying. The next time we see her, she’s three sheets to the wind and reeking like a booze tanker.”

***

Sheila’s voice, shrill and hysterical, pierced through the crack beneath the door. Katie didn’t have to listen to the words to know she was harping on Jim for some shortcoming or another. She brushed past Jared, who stood gaping, frozen in mid-knock, and gave a sharp rap at the door before pushing into the room without an invitation.

“Katie-Bug!”
Sheila clacked her death-defying stilettos across the hardwood floor, extending her arms. Katie cringed in anticipation of what was to come: a hollow hug that would leave enough space between them to harbor a St. Bernard, two lipsticky
mwah-mwahs
on
both cheeks, and—worst of all—held at a distance for inspection while Sheila pinched around at the jiggly backs of her arms just above the elbows.

“How’s your mother, darling? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Katie saw the hurt flash behind Sheila’s eyes at being neglected by her friend.
Big surprise!
she
wanted to scream.
And stop touching my back-arm flab!
“She’s good. I haven’t spoken with her for a few weeks…they’re still on the Coast, but I know they wanted to be here.” Katie forced a smile around the lie she knew nobody believed.

“Of course, darling, we know nothing can tempt Bill and Karen away from their warm, beautiful beach before they’re ready.”

Not my sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth birthday…or the Junior Prom, the SATs, or the car accident that put me in the hospital for three days.

“There’s my favorite girl!” Jim Evans intervened, giving Katie a quick kiss on the cheek. “How have you been doing, Katie-Bug? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

Katie didn’t answer but latched him into an affectionate hug, comforted by his familiar Irish Spring scent.

Christopher moved behind his mother and waved Heather and Jared in from the doorway. “All right, Mom, time for you to get ready. The ceremony will be starting soon.”

“But darling, I am ready.” Sheila turned to face her son and ran a hand down the length of her body, as if he had missed the sight of her.

Katie flexed her triceps a few times, vowing, as she always did after a Sheila encounter, to begin toning. She didn’t need to see Sheila’s face to know her lips were contorted into a thin, forced smile,
her expression serene, each slow blink exaggerated. Any Sheila novice would mistake this look for that of a reasonable person, but if Christopher pushed the issue, her mascara-caked lashes would gain rapid momentum, enough to launch a full-blown tirade.

“Mother, you’re not wearing that dress to my wedding,” Christopher insisted.

Katie was so used to Sheila’s eccentric style she hadn’t noticed the long, glamorous toga she was wearing. The golden gown, open in front and plunging in the back, stopped mid-right thigh before flowing down the left leg to the floor. Her hair was pulled high so that the bouquet of wild blonde curls spouting from the top of her head made her look like a soap opera star on Emmy night. She was, no doubt, ecstatic by this achievement. Sheila had spent the last twelve seasons as the leading villainous vixen on
Love’s Lionesses
—but this was not Emmy night.

Katie noticed Heather gaping in horror at the six-inch golden stilettos and understood why she would want the outfit banned from her wedding line.

“Where is the dress Heather had made for you?” Christopher demanded.

“Oh, that. I gave it to Goodwill. It made me look too much like a mother and it was so…so
plain.
And black.”

Christopher bit his lip. “That was the point.
Simple and black, like everyone else—except the bride.
And I hate to break it to you, but you
are
a mother—
my
mother.”

“Yes, of course, darling.
But honestly, if the tabloids got hold of pictures of me in that dress…it would be career suicide!”

“Mother, this is my wedding. Please, for once, don’t be the center of attention.”

Whether Shelia was acting or truly offended, Katie couldn’t tell, but Sheila’s back went ramrod straight, which meant Christopher had clearly struck a nerve.

“But I tried so hard….” Sheila’s eyelids fluttered—her method of producing tears.

Christopher stood his ground. “Mother, I will throw you out before I let you attend my wedding in that dress.”

Sheila’s fluttering eyelids froze mid-blink.

Yay
, Christopher! You grew that pair just in time!
Katie noticed she wasn’t the only one rooting for Christopher. Jim was beaming at his son, and Heather radiated adoration.

“You wouldn’t!” Sheila exclaimed.

“I would.”

Sheila seemed to consider her options for just a moment, and then a reluctant look of contrition seeped into her face. Maybe even a real one—not the overdramatized kind that veiled a truly sinister plan and could be seen worn by Eve St. Sebastian, her character on
Love’s Lionesses,
every Monday through Friday afternoon.

“I don’t have anything black to wear.”

Christopher looked again at his watch. “Well, Mother, we’ll have to put our heads together, and quickly, and try to figure something out.”

Sheila scavenged the room with her eyes. The stunning but devious Eve St. Sebastian smile emerged as she spotted Katie.
“Katie-Bug!
I looove your top! Darling, who’s the designer?”

“
Ummm
…” Katie knew there was no safe answer.

Every eye in the room darted to the smoke-colored teardrop beads that shimmied and taunted from her black blouse. She took two instinctive paces backward.

“Oh, no!
No, no, no waaay. Don’t think for one second I would consider putting even one foot in that thing—that dress.”

Sheila’s eyes narrowed with ferocity. “This happens to be a Vera Wang original!”

Katie cowered behind the protection of Jared’s wide, ripped shoulders.

“I agree with Katie.” Jim stepped demonstratively over an imaginary line that separated Katie and Jared from the rest. “Sheila, you can’t expect someone to bail you out every time you indulge in one of your whims.”

Sheila responded as she did whenever he tried to get principled on her—by pretending he’d said nothing at all. Instead, she waited for Katie to peep her head out from behind Jared’s back and gripped her with a pleading gaze.

“Sheila, I can’t. Don’t ask me…please,” Katie begged. Reacting to the wariness in her voice, Jared reached back and rubbed her arm.

“Katie-Bug, remember when the other kids teased you about your boobies?” She feigned sympathetic eyes. “Who took you shopping for your first bra? Remember how scared you were when you started your period? Who held a slumber party to celebrate your womanhood and taught you the secret of tampons?”

“You did,” Katie reluctantly conceded.

“Exactly.
Katie, you never would have made it through puberty without me. Now, all I’m asking is one tiny favor so I can be a part of my only son’s wedding.”

Katie hung her head with the proper mixture of guilt and mortification, and gaped at the strappy golden spikes laced across the actress’s feet.

“I can’t…those shoes! And your feet are a size bigger than mine.”

“That’s absurd!” Sheila flinched at the accusation.

“Come on, Sheila, this isn’t fair,” Jim rose to Katie’s defense. “She’ll break her neck trying to walk in those ridiculous shoes.”

“These are not ridiculous shoes! These are $900 Manolos!”

“Don’t you have something else shoved in the back of your car that you could wear?” Christopher suggested to Katie.

“Why would I bring dress clothes to go scuba diving?”

“I don’t know…maybe for the same reason you’re bringing a guitar you don’t remember how to play.”

“I thought I might have time to practice between dives.” Katie tipped her chin, challenging him to disbelieve.

He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and turned his attention back to the argument ensuing between his parents over the unnecessary extravagance of $900 shoes.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” Christopher’s uncharacteristic sternness quieted the room. “Jared is going to keep Katie from injuring herself. You wouldn’t mind lending Katie your arm for the evening, would you, buddy?”

“Of course not,” Jared agreed with a little too much enthusiasm for Katie’s liking.

“What about me?” Katie demanded. “Maybe I don’t want to stumble around all evening looking like a drunken, gold-dipped Aphrodite!” She forced herself to look her assailants in the eyes and noticed Heather nodding in absolute agreement. Katie felt a pang of responsibility. After all, Heather did brave a Colorado wedding and Hurricane Sheila for Christopher’s sake. And Katie did promise to keep things right.

“Never mind, I’ll do it.”

Were it possible to die of mortification, Katie would have croaked right there in the chapel. Sheila’s iconic Hollywood gown clung to Katie’s curves tighter than Saran Wrap, giving her the appearance of a six-foot-tall Academy Award. If that weren’t humiliating enough, the across-the-front halter left a gaping cleavage-hole that had Katie feeling way too exposed. She feared that one misstep in her oversized Manolos was all it would take to jiggle a boob right out of the opening.

She gripped Jared’s bicep so tightly that her knuckles turned white as she advanced past the almost two hundred seated people to take her place in the second row. They hadn’t even made it halfway down the aisle when the old lady whispers of Janice and Beverly Martin began to ricochet through the chapel.

“I’m surprised to see little Katie Sutherland in such a provocative outfit.”

“She’s not so little anymore. She’s got to be close to thirty now.”

“Still, it’s not like her to be so inappropriately dressed…though doesn’t she look glamorous?”

“For the life of me, I can’t figure that girl out. She should be married with a couple of babies by now. With those curves, it’s clear the good Lord intended her to be rearing children, not parading around like some high-dollar prostitute.”

Her step faltered and Jared wrapped a boa constrictor hold around her waist, supporting her so she had almost no weight on her precarious legs. She gave him a weak smile, trying not to notice the ghosts of high school past and the strangers present gawking at her. As
the cesspool of gossip gurgled up around them, she had to force herself not to flounder in it as she finished her trek down the aisle.