"Now, you two!" Great Aunt Olive's tongue resumed its sharp edge, looking from Jo to Max. "You know you can't see each other before the wedding."
"We'll have to see each other at the wedding rehearsal, Olive," Max grinned, his impudence a little past his wine. "And the dinner afterwards."
"Was machst du, I help, I help," Olive tried bustling Jo back into the kitchen, but Jo's aunt Helga emerged that moment to stop them.
"Hello, Aunt Olive," she dusted her hands on her apron and gave her a hug, getting some flour where Olive didn't like to brush it off in mixed company. "I called ahead. We're eating at the Lantern tonight," she said. "These kids have enough on their mind without feeding a houseful like this."
Olive looked at Nick and Connie kissing, as Paul ran to his daddy's lap.
"Only one thing on their mind in a wedding house," she groused.
"Don't worry, we'll be all split up tonight," said Jo. "Jason insists on a bachelor party."
"Where is the best man?" Alan looked up from the couch.
"Oh, he'll be here," Max smiled widely. "Old Screwball's never let me down yet."
"And how many marriages is this?" Nick grinned.
"Tomorrow it'll be … um … about as many as yours, Nickie," Jo said.
"Really?" he said, looking from Connie to Max. "So you went the mail-order bride route too before settling on Jo?" This earned him a punch in the arm.
"Wore two of them out, decided to buy American," Max laughed.
"Children, please!" said Helga. "Not in front of the … child."
But she was nodding in Olive's direction.
A bundle of bags appeared at the door. "Goodness," Jo exclaimed. "It's Auntie Edna!"
Edna Gudrun all but fell into the room, featureless hard-sided luggage and handbag landing in every direction.
"Heavens, mother," she scolded. "You could've taken at least one of these while I was paying the taxi. Colored people everywhere! That base is to blame."
"Auntie Edna, you've seen one black person your entire trip from Grand Forks," Alan said.
"Two," she countered. "That cab driver, and then, that porter …"
"That porter wasn't colored," said Olive, accent thick as Heinz ketchup. "He was a Gypsy."
"He had an earring," said Edna with a … violated look. "I didn't care for him at all."
"Well, you're among family now," Alan presented Edna to the room and introduced her around as Nick gathered the bags.
"Um, where?" he asked, looking a little lost.
"We will take the room on this floor, I think …" Edna said, but Olive interrupted.
"Wedding house, wedding house," she hissed. "The bride is upstairs, and we are upstairs too, I think, to help her."
"Oh, that's right," Edna shook loose a mental cobweb. "Put us upstairs."
"It's a little crowded, but I think I can fold a rollaway out in … dad's, um, study."
"It's okay, Jo," Alan gave her shoulders a squeeze and kissed her left temple. "They'd be happy there's so much … life in this house."
He tickled her belly, and Jo laughed. "Oh, the baby kicked!" she said.
"Have you divined the child yet?" Olive leaned in close, in spite of herself.
"Divined …" Jo laughed. "Oh, I'm afraid we're not into that kind of superstition …"
"Tut, tut, tut, it's just your great auntie Olive. I’ve never been wrong." She got Jo settled in a comfortable armchair, first scooting Paul out of it. She had her necklace off, onyx pendant flashing in the sunlight, and then suddenly put it back on again.
"Thinking about it, though," she said. "I think I'd like to wait until tomorrow to divine this child."
"What do you mean?" said Max, watching Nick re-enter from the kitchen. "Tell us if Alan's an aunt or an uncle!"
Olive looked a little embarrassed over the laughter of the room. "I just mean …"
"She just wants to wait 'til we're married," said Jo. "It's all the same, you know. It'll be a boy or a girl tomorrow as much as today. "
"All the same," she said. "I think I'll wait 'til tomorrow."
"It's a boy, anyway," Jo smiled.
"Oh, how do you know that?" Connie asked.
Jo rubbed her still largely manageable belly, "I just know. He is."
"Now we know what to get," said Edna, under her breath, but only just. "Now just tell us if it's a bridal shower or a baby shower."
Jo's hearing was excellent.
"Either way, I'll need something blue," she said, very mellow.
Edna turned beet red, but her spotlight was short-lived. Fred came bursting up from the basement, red hair flopping in the sunlight. "I've got …"
He saw the larger group of people assembled than when he went downstairs. He lowered his voice and moved to Alan. "I've got the … projector set up."
Alan laughed breezily.
"Oh Fred, that's just fine," he said. "We'll probably just end up watching television tonight anyway – World Series and all."
"Right, yeah, of course," Fred muttered. "Baseball."
Alan's company manners were excellent, but there was no denying Fred's emergence from the basement had bristled him and Nick a little. Nick rejoined Connie on the couch.
"Here's Screwy now!" Max leapt to the window as his friend Jason sidled up the walk, kicking leaves aside, all boots and long black coat.
"Afternoon all," Jason said, his blond hair shagged out at the height of fashion. "Hey, Josephine, Emily, Connie," he said, dipping Jo into a wildly inappropriate tongue kiss. "Don't you girls look lovely. Maxwell House," he punched Max in the shoulder, shrugging out of his jacket. "Good," he turned back to Jo, "to the very last drop."
"And then some," she giggled, as Olive turned a disapproving frown on all 6-feet-2-inches of rail thin anti-establishment. They'd never met, but she knew a ne'er-do-well when she saw one.
Jason, briefed as he'd been on the dramatis personae for this event, was never one to stand on formalities. "Olive Gudrun, you gorgeous creature!" He was the devil's own, hugging her round her waist and kissing her from her cheek to her lips to her glasses frame to her tight little bun. Olive didn't like to say anything, but when he was done, she didn't have any flour on her anymore. "Maxwell, this is your …"
"I am the best man, as most of the women in this room already know," he grinned evilly, and brought a small metal film canister out of his pocket. "And tonight is going to be one hell of a night."
"Language, please," Edna flustered.
"hew," Paul said, inarticulately.
"The party follows me wherever I go," Jason said. "But they're not going to bust a" – he opened the canister with a flourish – "family gathering."
"Is that what I think it is?" Max's eyes got big.
"Tain't parsley," Jason's grin was a giggle.
"Oh, I should've known," Olive went from zero to umbrage in mere seconds. "Drinking wine, smoking the mari-j-auna."
"Please, Olive,"
Max winked. "It's just cloves."
"No cloves I've ever baked with," Edna muttered.
"Yeah, just a little baking, downstairs, with Puff the Magic Dragon." Jason slipped the weed back in his pocket where it settled next to another canister with different contents, just as stimulating.
Paul knew what he'd heard. "Puff!" he shrieked, struggling away from his mother. "Puff da magic dwagon!"
"Puff puff," said Jason, picking him up above his head and swinging him over to his father.
"Are we going to da, to da sea?" he said, trying to figure out whether to face his dad or Jason, ending up upside down and hanging by his knees from his father's arm.
Jason poked his tummy and he giggled. "Nah little guy, Puff's coming here!"
"You just try to keep yourselves managed," Olive said, as Paul sang and struggled free. "That wedding is going on, Maxwell, if we need to strap you to a furniture dolly and bring your corpse."
"… in a wankled honawee!" Little legs churned down the hallway.
"I like the way you think, Olive," Jason was too dirty for words. "Gimme some more of that sweet, sweet candy!"
But Olive vanished into the kitchen, with Edna and Helga close behind.
"Where do you want this stuff?"
The front door banged shut behind Martin Wright, lumbered with suitcases and plastic suit bags through which five robin's egg blue tuxes were clearly visible.
"Hey, Marty!" Max hugged his friend. "How was the trip?"
"Kinda slippery out our way, but smooth sailing past Devils Lake," Marty and Jason worked with the athletics department at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He handed the suits off to Max, who looked at them and dropped them to the floor. "I told Jason if it was anyone but you…"
"Marty'd thought his prom days were behind him," Jason grinned.
"Well, we're going to be kind of all over the place," Max said. "Beyond all the women being upstairs …"
"Count me upstairs," said Jason.
"You'll be in even bigger trouble with Aunt Olive than you already are," Max grinned.
"I'm on the couch downstairs," said Nick.
"Oh, I had to move your stuff," said Fred. "For the projector."
"All right," said Jason. "What's open?"
"You can use that side room downstairs," Max said. Marty shrugged and headed down with the bags. To Jason, Max added, "Helga and Sophie have been getting every extra spot possible ready."
"Sister Sophie?"
"She's out at the church now getting everything set up with the florists and stuff," said Max. "She and Marsha are mostly who's been helping Jo and Helga get the house ready."
"How is that little squirt?"
"Bigger and bigger all the time – so you watch yourself," Max said. "Little sisters only get to be 17 for so long. I don't want you corrupting her."
"Too late. Sixteenth birthday party," Jason smirked.
"You are filthy," Jo said. "You'll burn up when you go in the church."
Jason winked. "I think I got something like that starting in my pants."
"That's disgusting!" Connie laughed. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"I soul kiss my mother with this mouth," Jason said.
"Are you never serious?"
Jason caught Marty's eye as he lumbered back into the room. "Hey, if you ain't got the space, I'll just sleep with the bride tonight."
"Not with VD you won't," she laughed.
"Standards, standards," said Jason, smacking Marty's hand. "Begging the question …"
"You guys got everything?" Max said quickly, circumventing a favorite joke at his expense.
"For tomorrow," Jason said, patting his jacket pocket. "And tonight."
"wing!"
Paul had very little idea what was going on, really, but he knew his part in it. Though that wasn't too clear as he was peering out from under Olive's big hat.
"God, it's that mushroom from Fantasia," Jason burst out laughing. "This stuff is really kicking in."
"What's that, little hat dude?" Marty lifted him over his head and spun him around. Care though he took, the high ceiling narrowly missed being whacked by a hat on a child.
Paul, oblivious, giggled recklessly. "wing!" he burbled. "i'm da wing bear."
"Wing bear!" Jason laughed, putting the hat on his own head. "Good God. You got the wing, Maxie-Pad?"
Max made the obligatory pantomime of not having it.
"That's in very bad taste, darlings," Jo said, struggling to her feet. "Well, if it's not there tonight, all I can say is it better be there tomorrow, 'cause I gots my tennies."
Max pulled it out of his top pocket and winked. "Jo just loved 'The Graduate.'"
"I loved Mrs. Robinson," said Jason, as he and Marty faced each other for a duet of air guitar and frumpy hat. "Koo koo katchoo."
"If everyone's here" – Olive marched in and retrieved her hat, the chill in her voice surpassing October winds – "maybe we can head over."