Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Yours or the times?” Temple asked mischievously. “Aren’t these tiny combs sewn inside the lining to anchor the hat to your hair just the cutest things?”

“Adorable, like you.” Electra glanced at her fellow panel member, the cat. “And your new hat goes with Mr. Midnight Louie’s new zebra-print carrying case. Too bad the party pooper is staying home.”

“Just as well this time.”

“Louie accompanied you to Chicago to meet Matt’s family. You don’t want your family to meet the grandcat when you and Matt visit?”

“We’re not thinking of relocating to Minneapolis,” Temple said.

“Don’t worry. Louie and I will hold the fort while you and Matt are gone,” Electra promised. Then she frowned. “You seem a bit hyper or nervous, Temple. Surely you’re not afraid of going home?”

Temple lowered the hat and then dialed back her smile.

“I am nervous,” she admitted. “My first candidate for a serious partner was not popular. It’ll be Matt’s debut for meeting the whole family, which means my four strapping brothers who only speak Sports and who only have sons among their sets of offspring. They’re threatening to out-populate the Fontana brothers, only louder. Testosterone is an air freshener in my parents’ house.”

“You’re the lone girl?”

“Except for my mother.”

“No wonder you’re such a feminine woman. Somebody had to bear the flag for the kinder, gentler, smarter gender.”

“Maybe. And, thanks to looking fourteen, I’ve never been given credit for growing up.”

“You’ll thank your lucky stars for ‘looking fourteen’ a few decades ahead.”

“And then, oh, Electra, there’s the terrible gaffe I just realized I made with my mom, now that I need to call her again to tell our arrival plans.”

“You? Made a gaffe? You’re Miss Smooth PR lady.”

“Not with her.”

“I met your folks just to nod at during the dinner before Kit’s wedding. They didn’t seem at all like ogres.”

Temple groaned and cast herself down on the couch, sitting with her hands over her eyes. “Of course you ‘met them just to nod at’ during the big Crystal Phoenix dinner. Of course they’d flown in one day for the dinner and out after the wedding the next day. Of course you were there because you were going to officiate for Aunt Kit and Aldo Fontana’s wedding the next day. Of course you’re only forty-some years older than I am, and you still have a memory.”

“Temple.” Electra sat beside her to pry the fingers away from her face without getting grazed by a long strong fingernail, all as natural as Louie’s. No fakes for Temple. “Tell me what’s troubling you. It can’t be as bad as you think.”

“It is. I got up my nerve to call Mom a while ago, before that crazy Area 54 project caused major havoc in my work life. I picked a Saturday noonish, when Dad and the boys were off pestering fish or something, to prepare her for Matt and me making a quick trip up to meet the whole Barr mob and discuss wedding possibilities.”

“Which will include a lovely civil ceremony at the Lovers’ Knot Chapel as a possibility.”

“Yes, you’re still in the running. Electra. As Unitarian Universalists, my folks wouldn’t blink at a non-church wedding, unlike Matt’s relatives in Chicago, who’d go ballistic.”

“All in-laws fight for custody of the cross-country wedding locale, although the bride’s family has the edge. We can have a secret, private ceremony here, if you like.”

“Secret and private sounds just the ticket right now.”

“So, dear girl, what did you do when you called your mother that has gone down in history as a Gaffe. Where did that word come from anyway?”

“It’s from the French for ‘blunder’. To me it’s a combination of ‘ghastly’ and a self- effacing social error. In other words, you want to crawl under the bathroom throw rug and never come out. And maybe throw up for good measure.”

“What could you do that’s so awful?”

Temple cringed, delicately. “I forgot.”

“What?”

“Everybody.”

“Everybody who?”

“My parents.”

“Oh. Bad.”

“And…Matt.”

“Worse. And this happened at the wedding banquet for Kit and Aldo?”

Temple nodded solemnly. “When I called Mom recently, I forgot that Matt and Aldo had joined my folks and Kit and me for dinner, and we announced my engagement. So I ‘broke the news’ to Mom all over again, and she played dumb and went along as if this were the first she’d ever heard of it. I only realized, duh, I was in the world’s worst rerun when I was talking to Kit about my wedding arrangements.

“And Kit says, ‘Thank God you ran Matt past them at that huge Crystal Phoenix dinner. So wise to confine the first meeting to such a short and chaotic visit. I was happy my big wedding hoopla provided cover. I don’t think what happened really sank in with Roger. When you and I brought out our engagement and wedding rings, I think Roger took Matt for a jewelry salesmen, rather than a fiancé.’”

“So your dad thinks you’re marrying some kind of jewelry distributor, like Avon but only via Tiffany?”

“Maybe. But my mom must think I’m nuts. Or, worse, flighty.”

“You do seem to have a hang-up about going home. You haven’t in two years.”

“It was major trauma and family dramatics when I met Max at the Guthrie Theater and relocated to Las Vegas to live with him. You’d think it was a crime, the Barrs’ ‘baby girl’, running off with a traveling magician without any visible signs of commitment.”

“Bosh. Not criminal, but wonderfully romantic,” Electra said. “I eloped with my first and third husbands.”

“Eloping implies you get married right away. Max and I didn’t.”

“You were thinking about it, though.”

“Sure, seriously. When thugs from Max’s counterterrorism past forced him to ‘disappear’ without a word, I especially couldn’t ‘phone home’ then. My judgment would really look Missing in Action.”

“Poor thing.” Electra patted Temple’s shoulders. “But Max came back several months later. All’s well that ends well. Thugs will never come for Matt and make him ‘disappear on you’. Your mother seems to have been more amused than alarmed by your ‘gaffe’. She may understand your being flustered more than you think. My goodness, I’d be flustered if I had just one of your two very eligible beaux buzzing around me.”

“How will I explain my temporary amnesia, though, to my mother?”

“I have a great idea!”

Temple sat up, ready for redemption.

“Make it a game, and re-announce your engagement again, then say you hope the family won’t make a big deal of it. Just sound very coy, like you’re giving her the pleasure of hearing the news an extra time. You know how to spin it better than I do.”

Temple sat up even straighter. “Yeah. I could do that. I could say she only has one daughter, so I’m giving her rerun engagement announcements so it feels like more.”

“And then move on quickly to trip arrangements.”

“Electra, you are brilliant! That’s just what I’ll do. I can’t thank you enough.”

“I’m not brilliant,” Electra said into Temple’s hair and heartfelt hug. “I just have a lot of experience with weddings, and marriage and mothers and daughters and nerves and all. And I’d be proud to call you my daughter no matter what you forgot, or ever could forget.”

Somebody sniffled. Maybe two somebodies.

Midnight Louie yawned, and sat down on his haunches. He eyed the bag, hat reinstalled. Anybody who had been watching would see he had some mid-night romping plans for them.