Page 14 of June Bride
“My period will be over before the wedding,” Brandy insisted. “Unless you guys keep stressing me out to the point it’s freakin’ late!”
Apple offered her squirmy client a weak smile. “There’s nothing we can’t do about a little bloat, dear. This dress has plenty of give for half an inch or so.”
Oh, a whole half an inch!
“Now,pleasesit still. This is delicate work I’m doing back here. I don’t want to accidentally screw up the fine beadwork the crafters did.”
Brandy took the hint.If I make her screw it up, I’m being charged to fix it.Brandelyn had already spent enough money on the dress and these minor alterations. What in the world made her think she had more to spare after all this was over? Thousands of dollars on her credit card. Boom. Done.
She’d be paying it off longer than it took her to pay off her student loans.
“I’m so jealous of Sunny right now,” Brandy muttered, hands on her pooching stomach. “It can’t be anywhere near as infuriating to bloat in a tux.” Not that Sunny ever bloated. She was a solid size eight all year round. Christmas cookies? Size eight. Easter candy?Eight.Summer barbecue? That size between six and ten. “I feel like I’m going to explode at any moment. You say there’s give back there? Not sure I believe you.”
“Oh, Sunny will be so handsome in a tuxedo,” Cathy said with a romantic sigh. “She really has the cheekbones for it.”
“Doesn’t she?” It warmed Brandy’s heart to hear it.
“I’m so glad you’re having a traditional type wedding, dear. After that city hall mess of Lizzie’s, I was afraid neither of my children would have a proper wedding. When you said you were gay and getting married, I knew it was going to be… I dunno. Hippie dresses and period art on the walls.”
Everyone turned their heads toward her. Even Apple, who had a pin trapped between her teeth.
“What?” Cathy asked with a shrug. “It happens all the time. I’ve been to upstate New York, like the rest of you!”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been to a wedding like that, Mom.” Brandy huffed. “Not in Eugene or Ashland.” Some might guess that Portland was the place for that kind of lesbian wedding. Not so. For therealcrunchy-catering experience, one went much farther south. Even so, Brandelyn told the truth when she said she had been to lesbian weddings up and down the Willamette and Rogue River Valleys and never saw something like what her mother described. Yet Cathy Meyer was a shining example of ignorance when it came to sexualities not her own. She was willing to believe everything and anything she heard,especiallyif it came from a fellow heterosexual. Brandelyn had spent most of her adult life doing two things: medicine, and attempting to unlearn her mother in everything she misunderstood about LGBT issues.
Slowly, but surely…
“Sunny is such a down to Earth girl, though.” Cathy shrugged off any minor embarrassment she felt and continued to flip through a bridal magazine left on her chair. “Exactly the kind of person you need in your life, Brandy. Have you met her?” That was directed to the seamstress, still staring down a stitch near Brandelyn’s butt.
“Yes, I have had the pleasure.”
“I admit, I was really surprised when Brandy told me she was seeinganywoman, let alone a country girl! Do you know how hard it is to find a genuine country girl where we’re from? I mean the ranch types. Not the ones from the hills or the Midwest. They’re a dime a dozen lining up for Broadway open-calls.”
Brandelyn rolled her eyes. Here her mother went.
“When she moved to Portland to go to medical school, I knew she was going to bring home some Californian beach bum and tell me she was dropping out to become his surfer wife.” Lizzie was the only one laughing at that. Everyone else checked their shock and went about their business. Especially Monica, who was glued to her phone. “Instead, she waited twenty years to bring home some sweet girl in boots and flannel. If I had to choose between the two, I would definitely take Sunny!”
“She’s definitely something,” Lizzie muttered.
“A younger woman, too,” Cathy said with a lowered voice, as if her daughter couldn’t hear. “Look at my Brandy, playing that male-dominated field like one of the boys.”
“She’s thirty-seven!” Brandelyn barked with a sudden jerk of her hips. Apple hissed through clenched teeth as she almost lost her stitch and stabbed Brandy in the ass. “How does that make her ayounger woman?We were both in our thirties when we started dating.” Brandy may be north of forty now, but there was nothing scandalous about the five-year gap between her and Sunny.
“Let your mother have this, please,” Cathy drolly said. “She gets so little to be excited about. If I’m happy you’re a doctor with a younger spouse…”
Lizzie interrupted, “It gives her something to brag about at the salon. You should hear her, Bran.‘My daughter is such a successful, important doctor that she has a whole practice all to herself in Oregon. She has a thousand patients. She just got engaged to a local and we’re going out for the wedding next week! Can you believe her fiancé runs their own business? My daughter is soooo successful! Not like my loser daughter Lizzie! She’s a receptionist at a dentist’s office instead of being a dentist herself!”
“That sounds nothing like me,” Cathy said with a sniff. “Besides, why shouldn’t I brag about my children? You should hear Maria when she goes on about that lawyer son of hers.”
“Oh, but Aunt Cathy,” Monica said, her sly grin announcing she was about to bring down the mood more than it already was, “what do you say when they ask whathisname is?”
Brandelyn didn’t have to turn around to know that her mother was redder than Apple’s name. “Obviously I tell them the name is Sunny!”
“Which they think isSonny…”
“Is it my fault they have preconceptions of west coast country people? Every other man around here is named Sonny, right? Either that or Dirk or Burt or whatever.”
Brandy sighed. She didn’t expect her mother to be open to her friends about a certain daughter’s gayness.My job is to be the doctor she can brag about to anyone who will listen.Yet that had come with a small price as well. When Brandelyn announced her intentions to go to medical school, her mother kept calling it “nursing school.” Her expectations for Brandy’s future were so low that she didn’t think her daughter would amount to anything more than a nurse.Not that there’s anything wrong with nurses. God knows I’ve worked with a thousand of them over the years.She simply hated the association ofwomenandnursing,as if it were unheard of to mix things up any other way.Don’t forget when I finally got her to understand I intended to become a doctor! “You’re not Asian!” That was it. That was her reaction.Never mind describing the existence of male nurses…
