Chapter 14 Enter Momzilla #2
I turn my head and am met with the most terrifying middle-aged woman ever.
She’s a redhead, clocking in at over six feet and easily two hundred pounds of pure muscle.
She has aggressively pointed eyebrows and biceps that would make a gym rat weep.
Her outfit doesn’t tone things down either: she’s dressed in a silky knee-length skirt, and held in place at her neck by a twisty silver brooch is a deer pelt cape.
With the head still intact. The deer’s eyes are bugged out.
Its tongue lolls to the left. I think this was homemade. As in, last night.
“Are you the photographer?” I ask hopefully. But Robert takes a soggy knee to the woman, dashing my hopes. Mandy, politely noting the cue, curtsies in her strawberry-embroidered skirt. Bulan bows nose-first into his clipboard.
“Good morning, Becuille mac Nuadat!” Robert says. His reverence merely prompts another huff. I swear Dexter starts trembling a tiny bit beneath us.
“Knock it off,” I grouse, stamping pointedly.
“It is not yet morning,” announces the she-monster, Becuille. She then shifts her ire to me. “I, Becuille mac Nuadat, am the mother of the bride. Master of ceremonies. Chief Druidess of the Northeastern Shore. And I did not approve of… those.”
I attempt to follow her gaze. It seems she’s referring to the pillows.
Which aren’t laid out in a seating arrangement anymore, but instead are forming a pyramid.
It gives the energy of ancient Egypt mated with the Woodstock concert of 1969.
What the hell? Is Dexter expressing an aesthetic preference?
Or was he preparing to turn them into a midnight snack?
“We’ll be putting the pillows into the arrangement Fi wanted,” I say soothingly. Or at least what I want to be soothing. It clearly isn’t the right tone, because the druidess clenches her teeth so hard, a vein sticks out of her neck.
“Who is Fi?” she demands.
“Your… daughter?”
“I see you refer to the sole child of my womb, Mryyaofionnadynn mac Nuadat,” says Becuille, who I now choose to think of as Hell-Mother.
Only a creature of darkness would terrify an animated chunk of dirt.
Or worse, give their daughter a name too long to fit on a Scantron.
“I told her your services would not be needed today.”
“Okay. Well, we signed a contract. You’ll have to take it up with her.”
“I will.” Before stalking away from me, she adds, “No pillows. Disgusting. Robert!”
Relieved to be off the hook, I slink away in search of Bulan.
I find him hiding, understandably, behind the cake stand. I’m glad he’s avoiding the Hell-Mother’s all-knowing sight. Compared to Robert and me, he has the disadvantage of being the shape and size of a soccer ball. And Becuille has the physique and vibe of a good kicker.
“Bulan,” I hiss. “Someone moved the pillows.”
“Well, I suppose you should move them back, then.”
Oh, like it’s easy. “The bride’s mom wants me to get rid of them. If I put them back how they were, I know she’ll be pissed. But I have to; it’s what Fi wants. What could Becuille do to me, Bulan? Can she curse me?”
“Stab you,” Bulan corrects. “Oh, I have not missed interacting with druids. So pretentious! You know they’re crunchy too. The pillows probably have polyester woven into the—”
“I don’t care if they’re made from orphaned babies’ hair and threaded with octopus tears. This wedding is for Fi and Asher, not Fi’s mom. What am I going to do?”
“Avoid creative punishment?” Bulan guesses.
Hmm. Judging by her deer-pelting skills, Becuille does seem like the creative type, not to mention the domineering kind. In #weddingtok terms, she’s a Momzilla for sure.
Now that the Hell-Mother’s landed on Dexter’s banks, almost all the work I’ve been performing to meet Fi’s requests gets derailed.
She doesn’t let me take a breath without disagreeing with how I’m doing my job.
Crumpling my layout sketch, she tells me the salad bar needs to be positioned in line with the sun.
On stable ground? Absolutely not! Oh, and what’s with the tables?
There shouldn’t be forks. Why are there forks?
What else are hands for? There go the forks, tossed into a makeshift fire she chanted into existence.
Becuille is such a terror, it takes me over fifteen minutes to realize that she’s not only indicating bizarre changes she wants me to make, but correcting problems too. Specifically, she’s noticing things I did that have been… undone.
Like the fact that all the knives somehow ended up in a punch bowl.
And that the napkins, which we laid out facing right, are now facing left, out of alignment with the sun.
It sounds like a small thing, but it’s annoyingly time-consuming to fix, especially when I discover the placards with the seating assignments have been shuffled and placed randomly on the tables.
Mandy and I didn’t make this mistake; we checked.
This isn’t us. It isn’t Becuille, either.
Is it Dexter?
Maybe, but I don’t have time to figure out how he could be managing this.
Supervising Momzilla requires my total focus.
While Bulan mostly spends the next hour hiding, and Robert takes an absurdly, maybe intentionally long time ferrying the canoes back across the pond, Mandy sticks bravely to my side.
During one particularly stressful rant, a glance at my phone informs me I’ve missed the scheduled arrival of Fi and her wedding party. Or, more accurately, they missed it.
Are they running behind schedule? And if so, how badly? I don’t see Fi anywhere, in spite of the lavender tint creeping into the sky.
There is, however, a suspicious splashing coming from the water.
Fi crawls onto Dexter’s bank wearing a white, satiny bridal dress with a sweetheart neckline, a lily pad stuck to her shoulder, and a completely blank expression. Presumably she knows her mother will have enough expression for them both.
“How could you let yourself fall in?” demands Becuille, dragging her wet daughter to her feet.
“The canoe had holes in it.”
Hold up. Our canoe was leaky, but even with a ton of pallets, it didn’t seem like it was going to imminently sink. I send Mandy a covert gesture she doesn’t comprehend. Okay, fine: it’s on me to go investigate, then. Because I can’t let this go. It’s my job not to let this go.
“Holes are nothing!” Becuille fumes at Fi, while I sneak over to the upside-down canoe that Robert is just dragging ashore. “You didn’t beseech the water for safe crossing, did you?”
Fi answers sullenly. “No, Mom, I didn’t. Let go of me.”
“At least it removed that awful potion from your face.”
“It’s called makeup. And it wasn’t awful.”
Up close, I have no trouble making out the holes pockmarking the salvaged canoe. Some of them are easily one inch wide. Most seem clumped together. I would’ve noticed them for sure when we did our last crossing.
Meaning this is new. It’s happened behind my back—like the pillow fort and the missing cutlery.
This is sabotage.
“Robert,” I hiss quietly. “Something nefarious is afoot.”
“Oh no! Do you think so?”
“I do,” I say. At once, Robert throws his hairy arms onto his head in a stage-worthy display of fear. “It’s almost like we’re being targeted for—”
“ONCE AGAIN,” snarls the Hell-Mother, scaring away a flock of shorebirds and causing Dexter to quake beneath us. “I disagree to disagree. What are you wearing? This isn’t the dress we agreed upon!”
“Unfortunately, I fed that one to a bear,” says Fi.
I look at Fi, absorbing everything about her situation in a way I haven’t done before: the unfriendly presence of her Hell-Mother, the sabotage, the soaking-wet wedding dress and messy hair.
An unstoppable wave of sympathy courses through me.
I’m no wedding expert, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t a great start to your wedding day.
Fi deserves the day she’s dreamed of, not the unhinged one being unexpectedly sprung on her.
In the shadow of Stonehenge Fake.0, I round up Bulan and Mandy.
“Any idea how we can help Fi?” I ask them. “Mandy, you first.”
“We can set her mom on fire!” Lit by the floodlight, Mandy’s shadow is actually, momentarily, more terrifying than Becuille’s.
“No. Next,” I say, filing that Grandma-like tendency away.
“Look, Sabby!” Bulan says, bouncing prodigiously. “The guests!”
On the opposite bank, indistinct figures are gathering. Several cars have parked along the break in the conifers near our van, and in the pale light of approaching dawn, I make out two saddled horses and what appears to be a moose. To be fair, the moose might be a coincidence.
All of this, however, reminds me of something important.
“You know how at Dave and Amanda’s wedding, all that stage equipment fell on top of us?” I ask.
“Of course!” says Bulan.
Mandy shakes her head. “Was it wedding confetti?”
“It was not! And before that happened, I thought I saw something creepy in the hallway. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a vampire or a rockabilly ghost. And remember I saw something tonight, before Robert showed up?
That I thought was a plastic bag?” Mandy and Bulan make noises of agreement.
“I think it’s followed us here. And it’s sabotaging us. ”
“No!” says Bulan. “Not an evil plastic bag!”
“I think it’s been sabotaging us,” I continue, hoping that I’ve communicated my gravitas appropriately.
It’s hard to say. Though Mandy murmurs, “How terrible!” in spite of this pronouncement, she seems as pretty and cheerful as ever.
Maybe that’s because of the white dahlia tucked behind her ear, stolen off the garland or plucked from the maws of Dexter.
Hmm. Actually, that gives me an idea. There isn’t much I can do if this wedding venue is being sabotaged, but maybe I can still help Fi feel—and look—bridal.