Read Bulls Island for Free Online Page B

surprised, Betts? Happy?”
    “Surprised like anything and happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” I said.
    “Then so am I! So am I!” We hugged each other with all our might and I could feel her begin to cry. “Tears of joy! What did you tell him?”
    “I told him yes! I said, oh, yes!”
    “Oh! My darling daughter! I am so thrilled for you!”
    My mother just blubbered like a woman whose baby had slipped from her hands into dark waters, lost forever.
    “Come on, Momma! It’s all right!”
    She quickly composed herself and smiled. “It’s silly of me, I know, but I guess…oh, there’s a part of me that will always see you as my little girl, running to me for a Band-Aid or with a report card, or missing teeth…you’ll see someday, Betts. There are just some moments that…well, you should sort of lose it!”
    “I am still that little girl, Momma, inside somewhere, but J.D.? Eight years together? It’s time, don’t you think?”
    She nodded. “I didn’t tell you, but J.D. came to us yesterday. We met for lunch and he asked both of us for our permission to marry you. Oh, he’s a wonderful young man, Betts. He really is.”
    Just then I noticed that J.D. and his father, Big Jim, were shaking hands with my father, Vaughn.
    “I’m gaining a daughter!” Big Jim said enthusiastically. “A beautiful one! A smart one!”
    “And our family will finally have a son! I couldn’t be more pleased,” my father said.
    My mother sighed, as she knew full well what chop my future waters held. Exhibit A: she nudged me and nodded toward Louisa, who was listing back and forth, doing a little wibble-wobble, as she silently poured champagne into the flutes. What in the world? Where were her congratulations? Were those few words on the terrace the best she had to offer? Wait! Had Louisa been drinking before my parents arrived? Young and inexperienced with alcohol as I was, I would not have doubted it at all. She had probably watched J.D. propose to me and gone running for the bottle. In fact, during our brief and antiseptic embrace, I noticed her breath did carry a whiff of gin, a smell I had always associated with something foul. I knew she favored martinis, and maybe because she was always so disagreeable, it was a cocktail I would not have consumed at gunpoint. Did she so despise the idea of me marrying J.D. that she had to drink in order to deal with it? Would I be driven to drink in orderto deal with her? Perhaps. I knew with certainty that having her for a mother-in-law was going to be a serious challenge.
    By God’s grace, we got through the toasting and made it to the dinner table, where someone unleashed the hounds of hell between the cucumber soup and the pork loin with mashed potatoes. If the pork was swimming in gravy, my head was swimming with anxiety.
    “Ah ’magine we’ll want to have our wedding he-ah,” Louisa said, with a slight slur, as though the prospect of this was a burden as well a blessing. “Ah mean, Ah have always dree-ummed of my son’s wedding taking place he-ah.”
    “That is awfully kind of you, Louisa, but I have always dreamed of our daughter’s wedding taking place at St. Mary’s downtown.” My mother’s voice was polite but resolute.
    “Oh, Adrianna, a Catholic ceremony. I should have known. Well, there’s nothing to be done about being a papist, is there?” Louisa cracked a smile of obvious disappointment and sighed. There was no response from around the table to her rudeness. “De-ah me. Well then, we’ll have our re cep shun here, won’t we, Elizabeth?”
    “Actually,” I said, “we have kind of a long tradition in our family of receptions at the Hibernian.”
    “The Hibernian ? LAW!”
    Louisa gasped as though I had suggested a keg party with plastic cups at the worst dump of a broken-down shack on Folly Beach. Men without shirts and girls in coconut bras hopping around in conga lines, eating corned-beef sandwiches and cannolis. I could see that my