Queen of Babble Read Free Page B

times.”
    “Did you mention we’re staying in a seventeenth-century French château with its own vineyard, perched on a hilltop overlooking a lush green valley through which snakes a long and lazy river?” Chaz wants to know.

    “Shari told me,” I say, “and it’s sweet of you to ask. Even if you’re not exactly in a position to be inviting people, because doesn’t the château belong to one of your friends from that prep school you went to, and not you?”
    “A trifling detail,” Chaz says. “Luke would love to have you.”
    “Ha,” Shari says, “I’ll say. More slave labor for his amateur wedding franchise.”
    “What’re they talking about?” Angelo asks me, looking confused.
    “Chaz’s childhood friend from prep school, Luke,” I explain to him, “has an ancestral home in France that his father rents out during the summer sometimes as a destination wedding spot. Shari and Chaz are leaving tomorrow to spend a month at the château for free, in exchange for helping out at the weddings.”
    “Destination wedding spot,” Angelo echoes. “You mean like Vegas?”
    “Right,” Shari says. “Only tasteful. And it costs more than one ninety-nine to get there. And there’s no free breakfast buffet.”
    Angelo looks shocked. “Then what’s thepoint ?”
    Someone tugs on the skirt of my dress and I look down. My sister Rose’s firstborn, Maggie, holds up a necklace made of macaroni.
    “Aunt Lizzie,” she says. “For you. I made it. For your gradutation.”
    “Why, thank you, Maggie,” I say, kneeling down so that Maggie can drop the necklace over my head.
    “The paint’s not dry,” Maggie says, pointing to the red and blue splotches of paint that have now been transferred from the macaroni to the front of my 1954 Suzy Perette rose silk party dress (which wasn’t cheap, even with my employee discount).
    “That’s okay, Mags,” I say. Because, after all, she’s only four. “It’s beautiful.”
    “There you are!” Grandma Nichols teeters toward us. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Anne-Marie. It’s time forDr. Quinn .”
    “Grandma,” I say, straightening up to grasp her spool-thin arm before she can topple over. I see that she has already managed to spill something all down the green crepe de chine 1960s tunic top I got her at the shop. Fortunately the paint stains from the macaroni necklace Maggie made for her are somewhat hiding the stain. “It’s Lizzie. Not Anne-Marie. Mom’s over by the dessert table. And what have you been drinking?”
    I seize the Heineken bottle in Grandma’s hand and smell its contents. It should, by prior agreement with the rest of my family, have been filled with nonalcoholic beer, then resealed, due to Grandma Nichols’s inability to hold her liquor, which has resulted in what my mom likes to call “incidents.” Mom was hoping to head off any “incidents” at my graduation party by letting Grandma have only nonalcoholic beer—but not telling her it was nonalcoholic, of course. Because then she would have raised a fuss, telling us we were trying to ruin an old lady’s good time and all.

    But I can’t tell if the beer in the bottle is of the nonalcoholic variety. We had stashed the faux Heinekens in a special section of the cooler for Grandma. But she may have managed to find the real thing somewhere. She’s crafty that way.
    Or she could just THINK she’s had the real thing, and consequently thinks she’s drunk.
    “Lizzie?” Grandma looks suspicious. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be away at college?”
    “I graduated from college in May, Grandma,” I say. Well, sort of, anyway. Not counting the two months I just spent in summer school getting my language requirement out of the way. “This is my graduation party. Well, my graduation-slash-bon voyage party.”
    “Bon voyage?” Grandma’s suspicion turns to indignation. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “To England, Grandma, the day after tomorrow,”