You Made This Drink, You Drink It

Finally, Brent was leaving. It was 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.