Chapter 15 The Visit Prep
Chapter15 The Visit Prep
The Mother of the Bride
“I can’t thank you enough, Ming. I didn’t know where I was going to put them,” Alexa said as she arrived with an overflowing
basket of goods from Pierre Lafond market to place in the guest wing. Water, wine, beer, sunscreen, chocolates, even baseball
caps curated by the prevailing purveyor of gourmet food, baked goods, and gifts in Montecito, along with a few prepared meals
in case they woke up hungry because of the time difference. Ming’s house was a modern single-story oasis on the grounds of
one of Montecito’s premier golf course communities, Nottingham Forest. Tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac, the home had enough
elevation for a view of the Pacific from one window and the Santa Barbara mountains from another.
Ming’s late spouse, Bob Cowan, lawyer to the stars and husband number two, had made sure to include in his will that this house was hers for as long as she wanted to live in it, much to the dismay of his adult children, who were hoping to sell the place and split the proceeds. Recently, there’d been some pressure on Ming to move into a smaller home so the boys could “liquidate the asset,” as the quasi-legal email from John, the eldest son, said. Periodically, real estate agents showed up at her door to do an assessment at the request of John and James Cowan. While it wasn’t in Ming’s nature to be petty, she’d recently remodeled the kitchen, an unmistakable signal to her stepsons that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“This is a masterpiece,” Ming said, referring to the basket of goodies. “I like your style. Kill them with kindness and chocolate
hazelnut scones.”
“I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It feels very different to be hosting future in-laws as opposed to normal clients. And really,
it’s Penny’s weekend, not mine. I can’t thank you enough for offering your guest wing. I know you said no house gifts, but
that’s not possible for me. This is for you,” Alexa said, handing over a bottle of wine and a pound of coffee to her friend,
who lived on both. “Hydration is everything. Shall I bring this around to the guest quarters?” she said, pointing to the basket.
“Just leave it there. Win can do it later.” Win was Ming’s house manager, a tanned, fortyish surfer who made sure that the
property was clean and landscaped, kept the fridge stocked with “Ming food” (wine, cottage cheese, chocolate, and sliced pineapple)
and ensured everything was in proper working order. Win didn’t perform menial tasks like scrubbing, mowing, and hammering,
but he hired people who did. He worked for several widowed women in Nottingham Forest and had quite a reputation for “going
the extra mile.” Not with Ming, of course, but reportedly with some of the other single, and lonelier, women. “He’s coming
by to check on everything to make sure we’re set. He’s opened the wine and put together a cheese platter, too. I don’t know
what I’d do without him.”
Save sixty thousand dollars a year , Alexa thought. But she didn’t say anything. Ming was a retired financial planner; she knew what money was worth. If she wanted to spend that amount on an employee like Win so she never had to talk to a service person or go to the grocery store or retrieve her mail, that was her prerogative. She was very busy with her mahjong and the Merry Widows. “I can’t thank you and Win enough.”
When Alexa had arrived home from the engagement party with the news that the MOG and her daughter were arriving in town for
a long weekend in July without lodging, the Merry Widows jumped into action. Ming immediately offered her guest wing, a convenient
and tastefully decorated collection of rooms with its own private entrance off the back of the house. Abigail and Sarah could
come and go, fix breakfast in the kitchenette, and find their way to the pool all without disturbing Ming. As a bonus, she
promised to invite them for a glass of wine upon arrival.
Toots had volunteered to host a dinner one night at her house, another architectural masterpiece called La Mariposa, so they
could all get a reading on the Blakemans in a relaxed setting. Roxanne, Frannie, and Mitsy would also be attendance, as if
dining together on a weekend night were the most natural thing in the world. Which it wasn’t, because that was social time,
the nights of the week when these society stalwarts put on their festive outfits and opened their wallets. But summer was
not the time for fundraisers, and by some miracle the whole group was home.
Just then, Alexa’s phone rang. It was Penny. She looked at Ming, who pointed out to the patio, indicating that she could talk
privately there. Ming knew business and wasn’t offended. Alexa slid the door open and stepped out onto the flagstone. “Hello,
dear. Are you on the plane?”
***
“I can’t come. I have too much work.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t you in the air?”
“No, I should be. But I’m at the office and I’ll be here all weekend. The client, that hotel chain I told you about, they want to expand the curated gift-box program I worked on last year. And they want me in charge. I can’t say no, Mom, even though we should have started the process months ago. It took so much energy to do one hotel last year. Now they want me to do four in the same amount of time. This is a huge opportunity and I need to be in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Monday.”
Last holiday season, Penny had a breakthrough moment at work that she had proudly shared with her mother. Their client, a
boutique hotel chain with ten properties in the South, wanted to promote their connection to local makers and creators to
lure travel pros, editors, influencers, and ultimately the paying public to their redesigned and rebranded country inns. The
client chose Savannah as destination number one and Penny spent weeks there, finding the perfect knitters, tinsmiths, weavers,
gourmet food purveyors, and watercolorists with products to sell and stories to tell. The boxes themselves were works of art,
becoming a coveted item among the travel in crowd. Penny and her crew spent equal amounts of time shooting, writing, and posting
about the artisans for social media. The project was considered a real success by her agency and her client. The media pickup
was impressive. The featured makers became minor stars, and the hotel bookings for the year rose almost immediately.
It was a win for client and community, the kind of work that felt beyond satisfying. It was Penny’s future. She saw the project
as her route to partnership in the firm. She wanted to be known for taking an idea that could have been ho-hum and creating
something special and memorable. She carried that momentum into other projects that year.
But now, there was a tension in Penny’s voice that Alexa recognized from the toughest days of her own career, the days when it felt like she had to solve every problem by herself. Like right after 9/11, when she watched her business plummet. Or during the global fi nancial crisis, when clients stayed home in droves, licking their own financial wounds while she struggled to keep the business afloat after buying out her partner. Or all the agonizing days of the pandemic, when she had to pivot from booking luxury cruises to scouting home rentals in Montana for clients who needed to get out of town because their palatial California homes were too suffocating. To Alexa, Penny sounded like she had on so many phone calls, like a working woman whose future depended upon pulling everything together in the next forty-eight hours. A world on your shoulders and yours alone.
“Arkansas? I hear only good things about Bentonville. So, what can I do? How can I make this easier for you?” That was a phrase
Alexa had learned from her own mother when she was dealing with some tourist who had lost a passport or missed the ferry.
How can I make this easier for you? No one wanted to accept help, but people welcomed ease. “Tell me what you need.”
Penny started to cry. “I don’t know if I can do this, Mom.”
“Do what?”
“All of it. Work, plan a wedding, be the supportive spouse on the campaign trail. I feel so much pressure to get everything
exactly right.” And there it was: the burden of being a perfectionist. Anything less than exactly right was a failure. “I
love Chase, I do. But I feel like this campaign is already taking over our lives and it hasn’t even officially started.” Another
sob could be heard. Penny went on to remind her mother that because she was marrying a public servant and not a high-paid
lobbyist, she needed to hold her own in the income department.
Alexa paused a second. Now she felt the pressure. She needed to get this right or this phone call might be the moment that Penny realized her mother didn’t fully support her life plan. “You need to take your tasks one at a time. I know you can do that. If work is this weekend’s priority, then work. I’ll cover for you here. It’s going into buildings and taking photos. Of course I can do that. And taste the cake? Happy to do that. You can come out in October and nail down all the final details. As for Chase...”
And here, Alexa faltered. Her relationship history didn’t put her in the Advice Givers Hall of Fame. When the going got tough
or intimate or even slightly inconvenient to her work schedule, Alexa bailed. But Penny was different. Penny dug in and made
it work. She stayed with her completely inadequate, in Alexa’s opinion, college boyfriend for far too long. Five years! Despite
his lack of ambition and love of beer pong.
But Chase, he seemed like a good match for her striving daughter, despite the Queens move. Alexa attempted to finish her sentence
with wise words. “You are a team and you need to be in constant communication with each other. He needs to know what you’re
feeling and you need to know what he is thinking. Because men don’t feel.” She said the last line to get a laugh out of Penny.
It didn’t. “Thanks, Mom. You’re right. One task at a time.”
“Is everything else okay, dear?”
“I’m sure Chase’s mother will be furious. I’m not sure she likes me.” For Penny, who had been universally liked her entire
life, especially by adults, who appreciated her ability to not ask tedious questions because she already knew the answers,
this was a shocking revelation. Because of Alexa’s status, she had no history with mothers-in-law. This was all new territory.
“I think she really expected Chase to marry someone like her. You know, New England–y. She doesn’t quite know what to make
of me.”
Alexa thought about her own family, where all males were kings, loved by their mothers despite having no discernible skills or ambitions. It was the Greek way. She’d seen her aunts and grandmother fawn over their adult sons like they were little boys. To Alexa, Abigail Blakeman seemed on edge about more than just her son’s choice of wife. She seemed anxious about every part of her life, as if she were gripping too tightly to a fantasy instead of embracing her reality. Chase represented the Blakeman family’s last stab at entitled success before their downward mobility engulfed them all. Penny must threaten that legacy, with her single mother and her Greek/Californian background. Also, Alexa suspected, with her style, her ambition, and her confidence. Abigail was probably a touch jealous of her son’s fiancée.
But Alexa was determined to win Abigail over, if only for Penny’s sake. It was the least she could do. “Her only son is getting
married. It’s not you, it’s her. Should I turn on my patented Diamandis charm offensive?”
“Thank you! Get the Widows in on it, too. And keep pouring the wine.”
“Don’t worry. The Widows never run out of wine. And I bought some beer for the sister. She seems like the beer type.”
Penny laughed finally. Some of the stress was draining from her voice. “She’s totally the beer type. Thank you, Mom. I appreciate
this so, so much. I’m so glad you’re on top of this.”
Alexa was proud of herself. A huge part of her job was mitigating the issues that arose when a group of strangers traveled
together to a foreign country, all of them harboring their own (out of control) expectations. De-escalation was her forte.
But Penny was so self-sufficient, Alexa rarely had to use her techniques on her. The crisis now over, Penny needed details.
“Tell me about your plans. What are you doing? Where are you going? I’m so proud of you. You’re going to smash this.”
***
“Is everything all right?” Ming asked when Alexa stepped back into the house after her phone call.
“She’s not coming. Penny. She’s not on the plane. She has too much work!”
“Oh, what a shame. You’ve done so much planning and scheduling. All those venues and florists and cake makers. And my cheese platter. You and I can eat it,” Ming said, opening the door of the fridge.
“We’ll need the cheese platter. The mother is coming. And the sister. Just not the bride.”
“What?” Ming said, shutting the fridge again.
“The Blakemans will be here, but Penny will not.” Alexa pulled up a chair at the breakfast bar and launched into an explanation.
“Remember her client, the boutique hotel in Savannah that she did those special gift boxes for last year? She sent us an extra
for the holiday gift exchange?”
“Oh, yes. I picked it! That delicious face oil and the bourbon peach jam. I could have eaten that with a spoon.” Ming, who
had a legendary sweet tooth among the Merry Widows, wasn’t lying about the jam. It was that good. But Alexa felt the need
to soften the truth of Penny’s situation. Someone in Ming’s tax bracket wouldn’t really understand the financial pressure
Penny felt, so Alexa skipped to the details.
“Well, the client loved it so much, they want her to create boxes for four more locations and send out to hundreds more media
and celebrities for the holidays. She was in a minor panic two weeks ago when we went dress shopping and the project was in
the pitch stage. And now it’s a major panic because it’s a go. First, her assistant quit, and then the new assistant quit.
Apparently, talking on the phone was too stressful for Gen Z. They didn’t want to call suppliers and fulfillment companies.
Or call the hotels to set the fam trips up,” Alexa explained, using the travel business lingo that she and Penny knew so well.
“Fam” equaled familiarization, and hotels or tourism bureaus often invited top agents to experience their hotels or cities
for free in hopes that they would recommend them to clients. “Penny is working all weekend to set everything up for the next
two weeks. On Monday, she goes to Charleston, New Orleans, Magnolia Springs, and somewhere in Arkansas. I can’t recall exactly
where, but she’s not coming here. Ricky’s picking up Chase’s mother and sister at LAX.”
Ricky was a regular driver for the Merry Widows, taking them to Los Angeles International Airport two hours up the road so they could avoid flying out of the small, underserved Santa Barbara Airport, which always meant a connection in Salt Lake City or Denver. When her trip fell apart, Penny arranged for Ricky to do the pickup because she wouldn’t wish the rental car lot at LAX on her worst enemy. And certainly not on her future mother-in-law. He charged a premium for late notice, even though the patronage of Odyssey Vacations had probably put both his kids through college.
“So thoughtful of Penny to arrange a car for them,” Ming said, as if booking a driver were complicated. Because Ming did so
few of her own quotidian tasks, she had no idea how little effort it took to open an app on your phone and get a car. Or food.
Or turn on the lights of your home before you arrived. The woman who had advised millionaires about their money marveled at
the mundane.
In the meantime, the enormity of what Alexa had promised her daughter dawned on her: a mile-long to-do list and two soon-to-be
in-laws arriving with attitudes. “What am I going to do with the two of them all weekend?”
Ming laughed. “You’re a tour guide with a wedding to plan. I’m sure you’ll be able to keep them busy for three days.”