Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Happy birthday, honey!” Mike yelled, kissing me on the cheek with a loud smack.

Through a tight smile, I asked, “Mike, what is this?”

“It’s your birthday party, silly,” he whispered under the guise of kissing my cheek again. His voice rose as he said, “I bet you thought I forgot, didn’t you? I know you said you didn’t want a big fuss, but you only turn thirty once. And I thought a surprise party would be fun.”

I looked around the room at the smiling, expectant faces. You couldn’t really tell this was a birthday party. The reception room, one social step down from the sacrosanct “for weddings only” banquet room, was tastefully decorated with votive arrangements of white roses. A piano player played low jazz tunes from the corner. There was an open bar and a beautiful buffet set up with seven different kinds of shellfish, all of which would make me break out in hives as I was allergic. It looked like a really nice cocktail party for a humane society or something.

“Mike, who are all of these people?” I asked quietly.

“Our friends.” Mike shrugged, sipping champagne.

“None of our friends are here,” I said through my smile, waving at an elderly woman in the back of the room who seemed to recognize me. Or she could have been trying to flag down a waiter. “In fact, I don’t recognize anybody. How did you manage to host a party in this town without inviting a single person I know?”

“They’re clients, Lacey,” he said in a low tone. “And potential clients. I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to get to know them on a personal level, to show them that we appreciate their friendship.”

“What about Scott and Allison? Or Charlie and Brandi?” I asked, naming two of Mike’s best friends and their wives, both of whom were our designated weekend barbecue buddies.

“There wasn’t room on the guest list.”

“Okay, where’s Emmett?” I asked, looking around the room. My brother loved all birthdays, though the roses and spa certificate were among his tamer offerings. On my twenty-eighth, he had his friend, Tony, the only working drag queen in the county, dress up like Marilyn Monroe and sing “Happy Birthday” to me. While Mike’s grandma told Tony he was a very talented girl, Wynnie and Jim Terwilliger sat there stone-faced and left right after cake.

Mike shrugged. “Beebee said he didn’t RSVP.”

“You didn’t call him?” I asked.

“I just figured he knew he would be uncomfortable and didn’t want to come,” he said. “Besides, I don’t think he’d make a great impression on the guests.”

My eyes narrowed at Mike. He had never been comfortable around my brother. He always tried to make conditions and restrictions on the time we spent with my family because he didn’t think he should have to put up with Emmett. He would go to Easter at my parents’ house as long as Emmett didn’t bring a date. He would go on a golfing weekend with my dad as long as Emmett wasn’t invited. It was like he thought the “gay” could rub off or something. “I thought that this was a birthday party for me. I told you I just wanted something small, something with my family -”

“Why would we want something small, when I’ve given you all this? Why can’t you just say thank you?” he said, gesturing across the room to his scantily clad secretary. Stunning in an off-the-shoulder black cocktail dress, Beebee was carrying a clipboard and intently instructing the waitstaff on the placement of an ice sculpture swan. “Beebee and I worked really hard to set this whole thing up and it wasn’t easy after just coming off the end of the fiscal year. Why can’t you just enjoy this?”

“Because I didn’t ask for it.” I poked my finger into Mike’s chest. “As usual, you just -”

I felt my mother’s arm slide around my waist and heard her tinkling laugh as she announced she was taking me to the ladies’ room to “freshen my lipstick.” Apparently, I’d chewed all of mine off.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I demanded the moment Mama shut the door behind us. She waited until she checked under the stall doors for feet to answer me.

“I thought you knew!” Mama exclaimed.

“But I told you about the lake thing; I even asked which weekend would work for you.”

“I thought you were trying to get information out of me,” Mama said, tutting sympathetically as she dabbed my lips with one of the dozens of lipsticks she kept in her handbag, organized by time of day and occasion. My brother and I were younger reflections of our mother. Age hadn’t dulled the china doll blue eyes, but careful maintenance had kept the thunder out of her thighs and the gray out of her wavy blond bob. She said she’d give up and go “scary and natural” after her sixtieth birthday. Until then, she was coiffed, calorie-conscious, and carried an emergency makeup kit in her purse. “I thought you were playing dumb.”

“Obviously it wasn’t an act!” I hissed, blotting dutifully when she held a tissue to my mouth.

“Well, it explains your outfit,” she said, peering down her nose at my peridot-colored cotton sundress and high-heeled sandals. While bright and breezy, the ensemble was not exactly country-club caliber. My hair was in a ponytail, for God’s sake.

“He said a ‘nice dinner.’ For Mike, that means D’Angelo’s, for which this outfit is perfectly appropriate. And of course he didn’t think to warn me that I might want to dress up a little.”

“Still,” she said, tsking gently. “This green is not your color -”

“Mama! Focus!”

“Right, I’m sorry, baby. I thought you would like a surprise party,” Mama said, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing me tight, but somehow managing not to wrinkle her beaded peach suit. “A little bit of fuss over a girl’s birthday never hurts.”

“It’s not what I asked for,” I said, grinding my teeth as I leaned against the wall. “As usual, Mike didn’t listen to me. He didn’t really care about what I wanted. He’s using my birthday as an excuse to schmooze clients. He’s going to write my birthday party off as a business expense.”

Mama gasped. “Is that who all those people are?”

“And why isn’t Emmett here?”

“I don’t know,” Mama said, her own coral-coated lips thinning. “I thought it was strange that he didn’t mention anything about it, but I thought that was because Mike was throwing the party and he couldn’t find anything nice to say about it.”

My parents were as politically conservative as the next Southern Baptists, but woe to the person who teased the gay cub in front of my Mama Bear. Carla Gibson still avoids Mama at the Piggly Wiggly after trying to ban Emmett’s “Salute to Cher” from the senior talent show when we were in high school. Mama never complained about Mike or his family or how they treated Emmett. Well, she never complained directly… she did, however, wonder aloud why Mike couldn’t try a little harder with Emmett, why his parents always clammed up whenever Emmett was around. This was, of course, a hint for me to do something about their behavior. But I’d never figured out what that was supposed to be.

“He’ll be sorry to have missed the chance to make fun of the outfits in there.” Mama smirked, dusting powder across her nose. “Did you see that blue thing Penny Frensley is wearing? What was she thinking?”

“This is just so typical of Mike,” I groused. “And he didn’t even plan the damn thing. He let his secretary do it.”

“Well, she did a good job; it’s a perfectly nice party,” Mama conceded. When she saw the glare I was giving her, she added, “Which is entirely beside the point. You’re absolutely right. Mike was wrong, wrong, wrong.”