Maybe if I just completely ignore the situation, he’ll forget about it. I turned on the radio, frantically searching for a song he knows that he can butcher the lyrics to.
Why is there so much fucking talk radio at five o’clock in the evening?
“Ooooh, this is a good song, Gavin! Do you know this song?” I ask overenthusiastically.
Carter looks at me like I'm insane as Kenny G notes filled the car.
Fucking Kenny G. Couldn’t you record ONE song with some lyrics? Michael Bolton taught you nothing. Epic fail, Kenny. Epic fail.
“You guys always lock your door when you make phone calls,” Gavin says.
Son of a bitch, Kenny G! You put everyone to sleep but my son. The ONE thing you had going for you and now it’s gone to shit.
“You guys kiss in there, don’t you?” Gavin asks.
I stop swaying to beat of Kenny G and shut off the BIC Lighter App on my phone, noticing that Carter is still looking at me funny. It’s like he’s never met me. I'm trying to get Gavin’s mind off of fertilization and bees fucking pigeons!
“YES!” Carter shouts. “That’s exactly what we do. We kiss. That’s all we do. Just kiss. Sometimes Mommy and Daddy need to lock the door so we can kiss. And…just kiss. What else would we do in there besides kiss? Ha ha! Mommy and Daddy sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-”
I reach over and squeeze his arm to get him to stop talking as we pull into my dad’s driveway. Gavin unbuckles his seatbelt and scrambles out of the car to race to my dad, his attention already diverted. My dad scoops him up into his arms and meets us at the car as Carter gets Gavin’s overnight bag out of the backseat, and I stand by my open door, breathing a sigh of relief that Sex Ed with our four-year-old is finally over.
“Hey, Papa! Mommy and Daddy lock their door so they can kiss!” Gavin tells him excitedly.
My dad looks a little grossed out and quickly changes the subject.
“I got that movie 'Gnomeo and Juliet' for us to watch tonight,” he tells Gavin.
Sadly, Gavin isn’t going to be deterred even for garden gnomes that come to life and ass rape a small community while they sleep. I’m sure that’s not what really happens in a children’s movie, but in my mind it is. Garden gnomes are creepy. I firmly believe they come to life after you go to bed at night and violate you.
“Mommy and Daddy make a lot of noise when they kiss. Mommy talks to God a lot. I talk to God sometimes too. I asked him for a puppy and a new monster truck but I was nice and didn’t yell at him like Mommy does. He still hasn’t gotten me the puppy though.”
And on that note, we kiss Gavin good-bye, jump into the car, and take off. My dad can deal with the birds and the bees and cows and the chickens and the kissing horses while visions of his daughter screaming for Jesus dance in his head.
We pull up to Liz and Jim’s house fifteen minutes later and park in the street behind the biggest limo bus I’ve ever seen. Liz had told me she rented something small and modest to drive us around so we wouldn’t have to worry about ruining someone’s night and forcing them to be our designated driver. Obviously her version of small and modest differ greatly from mine. This thing could house an entire football team with room to spare.
“It’s about time you two fuckers got here!” Drew yells as he meets us at the end of the driveway, tossing a beer through the air towards Carter.
In honor of the wine tours that evening, Drew dons a shirt with a picture of a corkscrew on the front that reads, “I pull out.”
We walk up the bus steps to join everyone else, noticing they are all well on their way toward getting drunk, everyone except Liz. She is all alone at the very back of the bus with her arms folded and a scowl on her face.
I take one look at her and know I had made it there just in time.
How could this have happened? Why wasn’t anyone helping my poor friend?
Leaving Carter at the front of the bus with Drew, Jim, and Jenny, I hurry down the aisle and sit down next to Liz.
“Who did this to you?” I ask angrily as I wrap my arm around her shoulder.
She looks at me and I swear I see her lip quiver.
“It’s okay. You can tell me. We’ll fix it,” I reassure her as I rub soothing circles on her back.
I see hope flare in her eyes, and I know she's going to be fine. I will make this better for her if it’s the last thing I do.
“My mother! It was her. It was all her!” she wails in anguish.
I quickly glance to the front of the bus, fearing that just thinking about Mrs. Gates will suddenly make her appear. Forget bridezilla! Mrs. Gates is mother-of-the-bridezilla. She is the biggest wedding Nazi in the world. Every single wedding tradition, old wives tale, ritual, and custom, Mary Gates believes in it, practices it, and forces everyone around her to participate in it.
Right now, my poor best friend is wearing a rhinestone tiara with a veil attached, a sash across the front of her that reads, “Bride to Be”, and underneath that sash, a tee-shirt with individually wrapped suckers strategically attached directly on top of her boobs. In bright pink glitter puff paint are the words, “Suck for a Buck”.