You Made This Drink, You Drink It

By Lindsay Moss

Let's face it, planning a wedding for any mother and daughter is no day at the spa. But does one crazy, "ready-for-rehab" mother plus one headstrong, "tell-it-like-it-is" daughter equal disaster in the dysfunction equation?

Lexxie Parker is a professional dancer who has struggled to swim upstream of her family's dirty little alcoholic secret for her entire life. Barely making it to the end of her twenties with her sanity and humorsomewhat intact, she's now faced with the ultimate challenge: Planning the wedding of her dreams with the Queen of Lunacy--her mother.
Strap on your seatbelt for a ride to remember, and see if Lexxie's walk down the aisle is paved with hot pink chiffon or spilled vodka and tonics, in this entertaining yet poignant slice of life, that is sure to make you gasp and giggle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 24, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467067706

Lindsay Moss

       Lindsay Moss graduated from Jacksonville University in Florida, with a B.F.A. in Dance. She now resides in Orlando, Florida where she works professionally in the entertainment industry, and lives with her husband. This is her first novel.   www.youmadethisdrink.com

Book preview

one

my whole jaw-line was horribly broken out in a constellation of zits, resembling the Big Dipper. This could only mean one thing—my parents were in town. We picked them up the night before at the airport and I left early the next morning before anyone was awake.

After a few hours I came back, and as I pulled into our driveway in Alice, I immediately noticed the garage door was open again. One of my biggest pet-peeves is when the garage door has been left open. I hate that. And I had asked a certain someone a gazillion times not to leave it open so the entire neighborhood could see all of our crap.

Alice was my white Ford Explorer. I’ve always named my cars. My first car in high school was a European Peugeot, Polly. Then it was Betty, the brown Bronco II that carried me through college. Naming my cars gives me a more personal relationship with them. These cars have gotten me through the greatest years of my life—we’ve laughed, cried and sang together during this whirlwind of my existence.

The fact that the garage door was left open pretty much ruined the whole white-picket-fence picture I was trying to live up to. I was convinced that our starter home was the cutest one on the block because it was a cozy, one story, Florida ranch-style that reminded me of the Northern charm I grew up with. Red bricks gave the little house its foundation and light gray paint accented its cottage-like wood paneling. The two front windows had black shutters with an American flag that fluttered in the breeze between them. I grew up being taught that you were judged by your exterior, so when people could see the mess inside our garage—I felt exposed.

After closing the garage door I walked into the kitchen. The first thing I saw on the counter was the party platter and crab dip from Publix. Then I was drawn to the surrounding evidence—finger sandwiches, the bloody Mary pitcher, cut-up celery stalks, wedges of lime, and the salt container, which would line the rims of several glasses. This was the scene of every weekend afternoon growing up in my parent’s house, and now, they were in mine.

It was obvious that they had taken over in my absence, due to the array of expensive food trays and cocktail preparations. This wasn’t exactly my idea of how to relax on a Saturday, considering how hard I had tried to get away from memories and reminders like this one, in the last 11 years. I rolled my shoulders, and cracked my head from side to side like a boxer going back into the ring.

Hi, I let them know I was back, as I picked up a sandwich.

My parents yelled, Hey, Laroo! as if they were welcoming their buddy into the frat house to join the party.

I was used to this sort of greeting and their endearing nickname for me. My family has been calling me The Lex-Laroo for a few decades, but Lexxie is my name and everyone calls me Lex. Lexxie wasn’t my given name. I think my parents named me incorrectly, according to how I even became Lexxie.

My dad wanted to name me after cigarettes and call me Winston—then after something poisonous and call me Ivy. Actually, my mother was the one who came up with my real name, Lexington. She presented it to my dad with a martini in her hand and her nose stuck up in the air, making me sound like a goddamned debutante that they would eventually give away to society. Boy, did they have the wrong idea—and the wrong girl.

My mother practically sang the name to my father, Lady Lexington Abigail Parker, as I’m sure she pictured a grown-up version of me in white gloves and a flowing dress, cascading down a mammoth staircase.

He loved it, and I imagine had a similar vision of me as a popular cheerleader on the arm of one of his rich colleagues’ sons, being crowned as the Homecoming Queen. I bet he yelled, Sold! as if claiming me at an estate auction.

Speaking of real estate—my great, great grandfather was General Lexington. He actually founded Lexington, Kentucky—I swear to God, look it up if you don’t believe me. That’s where my name came from in the first place. It’s way too fancy a name for a girl like me, not to mention it takes an hour just to say it. I started introducing myself as Lexxie as soon as I could speak. Seriously, I decided as a two-year-old that it suited me much better than the three-syllable nuisance of a name my parents gave me. So Lexxie is much more me, and I could actually live with myself having a name that doesn’t immediately connect me to a city that I haven’t even been to. It wasn’t the least bit important to me to have a distant claim to high-breeding to make me feel like I had an identity—that was more my parents’ game.

I didn’t exactly grow up to be what my parents intended. Meaning I didn’t just pick a degree in college that barely interested me, only to marry a rich man so I could stay at home ordering unnecessary gadgets from catalogs, or spend my days at the country club having lunch with my snooty girlfriends. Instead I turned out to be an opinionated, independent, free-spirit, who is the complete opposite of my parents.

And, I’m a dancer. No. Not that kind—disappointing as this may be to the many old, young, dirty and clean men who I have told this to in my life when they have asked my profession. (I can actually see them mouthing the word ex-ot-ic after I’ve said, dancer.) I’m probably ruining their greasy pole visual when I explain that I’m a classically trained ballet dancer.

I know their only comfort in understanding my profession is that I can do the splits. But let me be honest with you—except for a few ballet classes that I still force myself to go to, my grueling days as a true ballerina are over. Now it’s all about mortgage and car payments and hopefully picking up an extra gig here and there.

I do have a fabulous day job dancing at "The" Theme Park. It comes with benefits and a nice weekly paycheck that, as a performer, I’m lucky to be able to count on. I love the musical theatre show that I perform in for 10,000 people every day. The best part is that it’s so fun. Sometimes I laugh all day long, through all five shows.

I’ve worked my ass off for 23 years to have this—so it’s about time that I get to have some serious, eye-watering, side-splitting, fucking fun—and get paid for it, thank you very much. After all, the average retiring age for a female dancer is 27 years old, and I’m proud to have already beaten that by two years—I’m a sucker for statistics.

So I stood there in the kitchen, exhausted from the long rehearsal that I had gone to that morning. I looked around and observed the mess on the counter, realizing this scene that left a bad taste in my mouth as a child had been completely replicated in my own home. The bloody Mary paraphernalia warned me of a long drunken day with my mother, and the blaring Master’s Golf Tournament on T.V. with its boring commentary made me cringe.

I couldn’t believe the memories that this old familiar scene had triggered. The only thing different was the location. Even though I was standing in my own kitchen as an adult, I still felt like the confused little girl standing in my parents’ kitchen as the outsider looking in, like I didn’t belong. In less than five seconds everything came back to me—the secrets, the uneasiness, the glaring, the drunkenness.

That stupid bloody Mary pitcher. That pitcher, with its recognizable smell and the way the tomato juice solidified at the bottom of it, was a major warning sign—like a full-moon when the werewolves come out. It’s like if my mother started dinner at a restaurant with a martini, instead of her usual cocktail of choice—vodka and tonic—or in this case, when she started the day with a bloody Mary, that was a sure clue that you were about to step into hell. I hope you wore your flame-retardant boots.

I looked over at the three of them sitting on our new-leather-couch-that-wasn’t-even-close-to-being-paid-off. My painfully patient fiancé, Brent, sat between my parents like the miserable kid that had been left with his Aunt Edna all afternoon. My parents had their rehearsed Cheshire Cat grins plastered on—clearly recognizable by any adult child of an alcoholic, and they held up their almost empty bloody Mary glasses, as if toasting my return.

I looked at Brent, wondering what in the hell he must’ve been eating, knowing his complete dislike for seafood, as I watched my dad swipe a cracker through the crab dip. I also knew that his selective palate was not acceptable to my parents—they perceived his distaste for seafood as if it were a breeding flaw. Like maybe if he had been raised properly he would have the sophisticated taste for fish, like upper-class families did. Seriously, it was not alright with them that their future son-in-law wouldn’t eat a delicacy such as seafood. God forbid he ordered the Filet Mignon instead of the Sea Bass at their country club.

What do you mean a fish course isn’t an option? my mother questioned me when we first discussed the catering for the wedding.

"He doesn’t eat seafood, remember?" I said.

Oh for God’s sake, she said, exasperated, as she put her fingers to her forehead. She couldn’t disguise her disapproval for this obviously trivial issue. It was clearly too much for her to deal with.

I bet they didn’t even ask him what he wanted to eat or watch, as they crowded in on either side of him, forcing him to watch a boring golf tournament in his own living room. He doesn’t even like golf! Now don’t get the wrong idea. We were more than willing to be good hosts, but the way they made themselves comfortable was more on the verge of just plain rude than that of normal in-law behavior.

Brent was such a trooper. He always entertained my family at his own risk and on his own time, when I couldn’t because of some performance engagement. He never complained about anything, but now he was looking at me with this serious, almost threatening look that I could tell meant, "We have to talk, now."

Finally the tournament came back on, after the tedious commercial break when my parents, for conversation’s sake, asked about my rehearsal. I told them the basics—it’s not like they have ever really understood my profession. I think my mother only accepts what I do for the somewhat glamorous profile that she likes to pretend a dancer’s life is. Maybe if she ever got her head out of the deep end of the vodka pool, she would know—know that a dressing room isn’t exactly a harem. She always said that in her second life she wanted to come back as a princess or a ballerina, whatever that means.

I don’t think they were listening to a word I said. They cut me off as soon as the golfers came back on—horrible commentary.

Brent got up and I followed him to the kitchen sink, out of their view. He turned the water on but I still whispered, hardly opening my mouth, What’s going on?

He shook his head, like he wasn’t about to start what he wanted to talk about this close to their ear-shot. He turned the water off and motioned for me to follow him, as he headed toward our bedroom. We passed the couch as my mother re-applied her Cheshire Cat grin, while she tried to act like everything was alright, or convince me that she was on her best behavior. The only thing her grin showed me was her obvious drunkenness in the middle of the day.

Before we even made it to the back bathroom that was adjacent to our room, it was as if my mother knew what Brent would tell me, if we were ever alone. She started to distract me with constant, annoying questions, yelling to me from the other side of our 1230-square-foot house.

Hey Lex! Where are the paper towels?

In the pantry! I yelled back at her, not taking my eyes off of Brent’s pensive face. Tell me what’s going on, I said to him.

And then, Hey! I want to show you…Have you seen the…..Do you? Her voice was getting closer and closer to us as she came all the way back to our bathroom, interrupting what was about to be a serious, private conversation between me and my fiancé, in our house!

Well, well, well, she teased as if she were playing a game and sneaking up on us. Then she acted surprised when we were obviously irritated by her interruption. I watched her remember why she came back—to distract us. She showed me her new espadrilles with sequins on them to waste time, still ignoring the fact that we wanted to be alone. I knew she was petrified. It was clear to me that somehow she had managed to blow her cover. Blow her cover to Brent of all people.

Brent was the kind of guy that would always give anyone the benefit of the doubt, until they showed him otherwise. He even had a hard time understanding all of the horrible stories I had told him about my mother. But I was getting the feeling that something had definitely happened between them and maybe he had changed his mind about her. She had been caught, and was desperately trying to get one of us to throw her a life preserver. We didn’t have any on this ship.

When the annoying sequined espadrille chatter had ceased, she stood there looking at us, waiting for a new topic. After a few awkward seconds of no one trying to make the situation any more comfortable for her, she finally turned around in defeat and left us.

Brent was leaning against the sink infuriated, shaking his head. I tried rubbing the top of his hand that was closest to me, letting him know that I was waiting for him to tell me what on earth had happened. He was not up for my affection, and I could tell something was making him nervous. When he started talking, I gestured for him to whisper, afraid that she might be lurking around the corner listening—a rule I have grown up with.

Well, he began, everything was fine and we were all just sitting there on the couch watching golf and—and she leaned over to me in this playful way and said, he paused as if not sure how to say it. Like maybe now that he did have me to himself, he may have changed his mind in telling me.

Brent, what? Jesus Christ. I was about to pull my hair out.

He looked at me affectionately at first and then with that sympathetic look my friends have been giving me for years when they get their own dose of my mother’s medicine, like they feel sorry for me. I don’t even know what we were talking about or how it even came up, he hesitated.

I nodded, waiting for him to tell me, even though I had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

Well, your mom leaned over and said, ‘I hope you two don’t have a girl first, because Lexxie will be just like me, and I lost my husband to her for 18 years.’

I pursed my lips together hard and sort of smirked shaking my head at him. I couldn’t believe she felt compelled to share the obvious problems in her own marriage with my fiancé!

Then he asked me, confused, What kind of mother says that?

Mine, I thought. Mine. That drunken, poisonous tongued, lunatic sitting on our un-paid-for-leather-couch, that’s who. I didn’t know if I should apologize to Brent or throw something at my mother. I just stood there looking at him. I knew the potential for her inappropriate behavior, and I wondered what would happen next. What would she do this time so that we could all remember it for the rest of our lives?

She was unaware that I had told Brent years before of how she had constantly accused me and my dad of being incestual my entire life. And I know that’s what made his skin crawl in reaction to her uncomfortable comment. I can’t imagine how weird it must have been for him as he sat in between them knowing what he knew, while my father obviously chose to ignore his wife’s cocktail conversation. We couldn’t understand why my mother, would tell my fiancé, about her resentful marriage.

I remembered when she walked into my bedroom and saw my dad massaging my sore calves with Ben-Gay after a hard day of ballet classes when I was a teenager. She scorned her squinty eyes at us like we were sinners. It’s the reason that still to this day I never kiss my dad on the lips—I always thought I would get in trouble.

We left the bathroom together, and I didn’t question Brent when he immediately got on the computer to get away from my mother. I sat in his spot on the couch between my parents, trying to just get through, as my dad would say, the rest of the afternoon. Soon Brent had to leave to do a convention for his show at The Theme Park. He’s a dancer too. I never thought I would end up with one either, and he was certainly not the doctor or lawyer that my parents assumed I would marry.

I sat between them like a hostage. I had to act like everything was fine, as always. It was obvious that Brent had already had enough, and I wasn’t going to make him more uncomfortable by confronting my mother while he was still there. The golf commentary was still blaring, and I was so mad I could’ve backhanded her as she sat beside me sucking on the lime that garnished her glass.

She was returning from the kitchen with another drink (surprise), when suddenly she noticed how long Brent had been on the computer. I could sense her disgust for his behavior, and I knew she had no idea that he was purposefully avoiding her. I could read her like a children’s book, and I could feel the air start to churn. I knew the storm that I had been dreading was about to start. It was inevitable. The clouds were coming in and getting darker and darker.

Is he always like this? she cocked her eyebrow.

It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Her voice crackled like thunder. She made it perfectly clear that she thought it was bad manners for him to exclude himself like this. I ignored her intentions, even as she smirked. But I had seen this show of hers before. The afternoon had turned too quiet for her liking. She was bored with the golf tournament and maybe my father, and needed to cause a commotion. Or maybe she was reacting to the fact that Brent and I had excluded her from our conversation in the bathroom. Her constant need for chaos wore me out years ago, and I knew we were only minutes away from being hit by her tornado.

"Do you always spend this much quality time together?" She could barely focus on me, and I knew she thought nothing of her snide words. The eye of her storm was above my head, and it picked up speed with her hateful mood. I wondered if she had any idea how much she could hurt someone’s feelings in just one sentence. And then I hated myself for letting her still hurt me.

"Mom, stop it," I glared at her through gritted teeth the way I have been since…. birth.

She made a point of ignoring me and my tone as she pretended to immerse herself back into the boring golf tournament.

I managed to sit there calmly without biting my tongue in half. And what really made me crazy was that she sat there like the kettle calling the pot black. Hello kettle, this is the pot—you’re black. How dare she make any judgment on my fiancé and our future marriage—especially after the stunt she had just pulled hours before. Or was it years before? Months before. Days, before.

Finally, Brent was leaving. It was after 5:00, and we were all saying goodbye to him at the back door when I remembered how the garage door had been open when I came home. Hey Brenty, don’t leave the garage door open, I reminded him.

Before he could even react, my mother butted in. She didn’t even look up from her sloppy task of trying to grab the lime with her fingers at the bottom of her vodka and tonic glass. "Yeah, don’t leave the garage door open, Brenty."

I couldn’t believe that she actually reprimanded my fiancé and made a mockery of my endearing nickname for him all in one breath. Then again, maybe I could.

Do me a favor, she scoffed at me, don’t do the whole ‘Brenty’ thing at your wedding in front of all our friends. She teetered, losing her balance as she looked up, They’ll think he’s gay.

I looked at her and then at my father, shaking my head in humiliation. Un-bel-iev-able! I wondered how long that one had been eating at her—considering that I had been calling him that for almost five years.

Brent stood there awkwardly, like a deer in headlights wondering if this was his cue to leave. I was still shaking my head at her, but now in sarcastic amusement. The parental voice I have perfected after years of dealing with her drunken nastiness possessed me once again. "Uh, no. You do not tell him what to do." My anger was very apparent—pun intended.

Brent kissed me quickly and practically left skid marks as he peeled out of the driveway. My dad waved goodbye to him from the door as if he were seeing him off to summer camp. After all these years my dad chose to protect himself by living in the familiar cocoon of his own denial. He still acted completely unaware of his incoherent wife that wobbled beside him, oblivious to the ludicrous destruction she always left in her tracks.

I closed the door as I fought the urge to slam my head against it, wondering if the man who I was supposed to marry would ever come back, after witnessing the sheer reality of what he was about to deal with for the rest of his life. It was all I could do not to stick my head in the oven.

two

you’re probably wondering why I even let my parents set foot in our house in the first place. Brent and I were getting married in five months, and they came down to plan the wedding with us. Great. My mom visited once before and this was the first time my dad had been to our new home. We bought the house five months earlier, around Christmas, with the money I saved in Japan.

I guess I’ll tell you about that now—you can’t just blurt out a country like Japan without an explanation. Brent and I had been living together in an apartment on the golf course for almost three years in Orlando. It was soon after September 11th and unless you had a full time gig at The Theme Park like Brent, there were no jobs for us free-lancer-dancers.

I was working sporadically at The Theme Park, having just recovered from a devastating knee injury that resulted in reconstructive surgery, which took 10 months to heal—when the casting directors asked me to go and dance in Japan at another theme park, which was affiliated with the one here. I considered myself lucky to have work.

The only set-back was that I would be 7,000 miles away from Brent—away from our fabulous apartment—away from our two cats, Fred Garvin and Harry Burns. I had to go. For starters, the money was ridiculous! So ridiculous that it would allow us to buy a house and put a lot of money down on it. It was the kind of money that dancers like us just do not, and will not ever have. So I went.

Three months into the seven-month contract, Brent came all the way over to visit me. You need to know something about Brent—he was married before. Alright, he was married when I met him. It’s not like I meant to commit adultery. Finding the love of your life doesn’t always happen like a fairytale. Also, for as much as I’ve always wanted to play the role of a taunting seductress, and let you believe that I stole Brent away from his wife—yeah, their marriage was over way before I even came into the picture.

Everyone thought that Brent would propose when he came to Japan, but I had to convince them that it wasn’t going to happen. I was on the verge of calling it quits for good because I was so sick of waiting for him to get his goddamned divorce. Even after being together for over three years, he still had not signed the papers.

He would argue with me, saying, It’s just a stupid piece of paper. I’m with you. She’s in Canada, for Christ’s sake, having someone else’s baby!

Yeah, his ex-wife was a real winner. He always talked his way out of it—for three years he did. But it wasn’t like he was holding on to her for something. She had frivolously spent a lot of his hard-earned money, and he refused to use more of it to pay for