The Turkey Wore Satin (2 page)

“
I didn’t think the great
Mayfairs attracted pests,” Tyrone teased.

“
Jonnie attracted
you
, didn’t he?” George shot back.

The room fell again into silence, but Marty
felt that barb just as sharply as Tyrone must have. Even in
marriage, guys like Tyrone and Marty would never be on equal
footing with the Mayfair bloodline.

Jack and George fit in okay. They had that
upper-class edge Marty would never understand, or even be able to
copy. Kristin never made him feel like he was less worthy than the
rich guys she’d dated before him, but her mother certainly did. So
did Kristin’s Aunt Cynthia, although Grandma Iris was the absolute
worst. All she had to do was look at Marty to make him feel
inferior.

It was a talent he hoped his wife would
never develop.

All the men were sweating as show time
approached, but none more profusely than George. Even through cake
makeup, his face glowed red. Holy Moly, the guy was dripping like a
faucet! Marty had no idea whether this was business as usual, since
he’d never been backstage before. None of the other men seemed
quite as nervous.

Downstairs, the women chanted: “On with the
show! On with the show!”

God, was it really that time? Marty’s
stomach rumbled. Could he seriously lip-synch and strike a pose in
front of his wife’s family?

Ah, but he had to. No choice in the matter.
It was a Mayfair family tradition.

Like ducks in a row, the men walked that
green mile toward the front staircase, which was as grand as the
Mayfair matriarch herself.

With the exceptions of George and Jonnie,
the men seemed much more self-assured than Marty. Tyrone and Jack
could walk in heels without stumbling, even when they started down
the stairs.

Tyrone, as acting MC, led the line down to
the luxurious marble foyer. The Mayfair women all wore their
holiday best, which meant the best of the best: fine fabrics
stitched with glass beads and crystals. From the Great Room, they
cheered and hollered and snapped photographs of the men in
drag.

The men’s dresses were by far more showy and
flamboyant than the women’s, but they weren’t quality pieces. Marty
would hate to be sweating all over a three-thousand dollar Donna
Karan. Not that Marty’s perspiration held a candle to George’s. The
poor guy looked like a pig in a satin blanket.

“
How you holding up?”
Marty whispered as the other men paraded before their wives and
family members.

The women cheered and applauded so loudly it
was a challenge to catch George’s answer. It sounded like, “A bit,”
but he was struggling for breath, like every inhale was a painful
chore.

“
Come on!” Tyrone hollered
from the Great Room. “Hurry your sweet asses up!”

In that outfit, Tyrone didn’t just look like
Tina Turner, he
sounded
like Tina Turner, too! Ah, the power
of suggestion!

The other men were way up ahead, strutting
their stuff while Marty hung back in the marble foyer with George.
George’s illness was a happy excuse to delay entry into the Great
Room, Marty had to admit. He hadn’t even stepped off the stairs yet
and, in truth, he felt too nervous to let go of the stair rail. The
second he stepped onto that marble floor, he’d surely collapse.
He’d put on the Spanx Tyrone had given him, but he felt bloated
with bread and brie.

Why oh why had he eaten so much cheese?

He should have followed George’s example and
stuck to grapes!

“
Happy Thanksgiving,
Mayfair Ladies!”

Oh no, Tyrone was starting the show! Marty
pressed his fake nails into the wooden railing so hard one of them
flew right off, flipping in the air before click-clacking down on
the marble.

Tyrone asked, “Are you ready for your men to
put on a show?”

Hoots, hollers, applause!

Everyone but Marty had made it to the Great
Room by now. Oh, except George. The poor old guy faced that
direction, but wavered side to side like a buoy rocking on ocean
waves.

“
Your boys are dressed to
impress,” Tyrone went on. “Now, who’s ready to rock?”

Laughter, wolf-whistles, cheers!

The longer Marty stared at the back of
George’s gleaming blonde wig, the more adamantly he felt that
something must be wrong. That’s when George started shaking, like
he was having a seizure or something. Yeah, this was more than just
stage fright or shoe troubles. His satin skirt quivered and quaked.
His feather boa trembled like a squatting dog.

Tyrone clearly had no clue what was
happening out in the hall. He announced, “Let me introduce them to
you…”

George slid one foot forward on the marble,
and it just kept going.

Marty had never seen such a large man do the
splits. He belted with laughter, and clapped his hands to
acknowledge the effort. “Way to go, man! That’s quite a feat!”

When George made no response, Marty asked,
“Hey, you okay, Uncle George? Need a hand?”

George fell to one side

In the next room, the Mayfair women cheered
like crazy while Tyrone brought out the men in tights.

Marty tuned out the frenzy. Kicking off his
heels, he raced across the foyer, falling so hard at George’s side
that he worried he’d put a hole in his nylons.

“
George?” Marty smacked
the guy’s bloated face, but got no reaction. He shook George’s
shoulders hard enough that one fake boob rolled out the top of the
big man’s dress. “Quit fooling around, George!”

This fallen-over-splits position would be
impossible for any out-of-shape man to hold for so long, unless
he’d been training in the off-season. And training to hold his
breath indefinitely, too.

“
Guys!” Marty shouted.
“Guys! I think you’d better come out here!”

Chapter Three

“
Guys?” Marty cried.
“Help!”

It grew apparent that nobody could hear him
over Tyrone’s introduction and the Mayfair women’s frenzied
cheers.

Marty tried slapping George in the face to
revive him, but that didn’t work. He tried shaking the guy, but
George’s head snapped back and forth in a way that did not look
natural.

“
Help!” Marty called out.
“Kristin? Call an ambulance!”

He hadn’t stopped shaking his new wife’s
uncle, and suddenly George’s dead weight tumbled toward him. When
the man’s sweaty face landed against Marty’s bare shoulder, that
did it. He screamed in a way that was… let’s just say less than
manly. Okay, okay: he screamed like a scared little girl. And, in
truth, with a man—a definitely dead man, he now realized—collapsed
on his shoulder, who could blame him?

“
What is the meaning of
this?” Grandma Iris asked in a huff. “Young man, you are ruining
the Amazing Annual Mayfair Family Drag Show!”

“
Help!” Marty shouted,
since he’d finally managed to grab their attention. “Help, please!
I think he’s dead!”

The magnitude of what was happening only
really hit Marty when the family rushed into the marble foyer with
a click-clack of heels.

Kristin pushed to the front of the crowd,
and covered her mouth with both hands. “Marty, what happened?”

“
I don’t know!” His Spanx
gripped his waistline so tight he could barely breathe. “It must
have been a heart attack or something. He just collapsed like
this.”

“
Doing the splits?”
Kristin’s mother, Angela, asked. “How bizarre. How very truly
bizarre.”

George’s daughters fell at his sides. While
they attempted to revive him in a whirlwind of chest punches and
face slaps, Marty managed to shuffle toward the stairs.

The truth was obvious, at least to Marty.
Uncle George was dead. No bringing him back.

The paramedics were called at Brykia’s
insistence. Like Marty, the sweet-faced cook couldn’t understand
her employer’s desire to leave George’s body in the foyer while
they proceeded with their drag show. A death in the family should
to take precedence over a stage performance. It would in any other
household.

The Mayfairs were very strange people.

* * * *

Two paramedics in dark blue uniforms arrived
on the scene at their leisure. When they entered the foyer of glitz
and glam, one asked the other, “What the heck have we walked in
on?”

Grandma Iris told them, “We were preparing
for our annual drag show, and I dare say it would have gone off
without a hitch if my wretched son-in-law didn’t have the audacity
to drop dead!”

The paramedics exchanged a dubious glance
before checking for a pulse. The professionals agreed good old
Uncle George was damaged beyond repair.

“
But you called this in as
a heart attack,” said the short, shapely paramedic with the
ponytail. “Doesn’t look like a heart attack to me. See this mark
here?”

The whole family crept closer to investigate
the red spot on George’s arm.

“
Whatever is it?” Grandma
Iris asked, clutching a lace hanky just beneath her lips. “Don’t
tell me he was killed by a pimple!”

“
Not a pimple,” said the
other paramedic, who looked like a male Whoopie Goldberg. “Spider
bite. Black widow, I’d say. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but
I
did
minor in entomology back in college.”

The ponytail paramedic perked up. “Hey, me
too! Small world.”

“
Yes, yes, you two should
get married some time,” Cousin Beth snapped. “But before for you
start planning the honeymoon, would you kindly explain how a black
widow spider crawled all the way to our little corner of the planet
and ended up on my father’s arm?”

It was Beth’s mother, Kristin’s Aunt
Cynthia, who answered that question. “I’ve heard news reports about
dangerous spiders travelling here in bunches of grapes. By the time
they end up in somebody’s kitchen, they’re so riled up they bite
the first person they see!”

“
Oh, so now you’re an
entomologist too?” Beth said to her mother—which, actually, struck
Marty as a pretty rude way to talk to someone whose husband had
just dropped dead.

Kristin’s father jumped in to say, “No, no,
Cynthia’s right. We did have grapes earlier. Remember, guys? They
were part of the cheese platter.”

“
And George had his own
dish,” Jonnie added. “Brykia wrapped it up for him—grapes that
hadn’t touched cheese.”

“
Because of his lactose
intolerance,” Tyrone said. With his hip popped and his knee bent,
he looked exactly like Tina. Marty did so many double takes he
thought he’d get whiplash.

“
But I washed the grapes!”
Brykia cried.

Marty jumped because he hadn’t realized she
was standing so close to him. In those rubber-soled shoes, the cook
could sneak around like a ghost.

“
I washed them, Madame
Iris, I swear.” Poor Brykia probably thought her job was in danger,
and she was probably right, knowing what these Mayfairs were like.
Brykia pleaded, “No spiders in the grapes. Everything was
clean.”

“
Well, perhaps
your
clean and
my
clean are different cleans altogether,” Grandma
Iris replied.

“
It doesn’t matter where
the spider came from,” said Cousin Georgette. “Spider bites don’t
kill people. Daddy must have died of something else!”

“
Oh, now you’re an
entomologist too?” Cousin Beth scoffed.

Georgette looked to the paramedics for
answers. “Do spiders really kill people?”

“
Not usually,” both
paramedics said at once. They blushed and both said, “You go,” “No,
you go,” and then they laughed and blushed some more.

When her giggles died down, the ponytail
paramedic said, “Death from spider bites are unusual unless the
patient is quite old or quite young, or if their immune system is
compromised in some way.”

“
Or,” said the male
Whoopie, “if the person doesn’t seek immediate medical attention.
He would have felt incredibly ill before he died.”

Marty spoke up: “Yes, he was. I saw him. He
was sweating like a pig!”

Male Whoopi asked, “What could have been so
important that he’d risk his life by not going to the
hospital?”

Tyrone looked at Jonnie, who looked at Jack,
who flicked his long black hair behind his shoulders. “He’d never
lost the drag competition.”

The paramedics exchanged doubtful
glances.

“
It’s a coveted title,”
Jack told them.

“
Coveted enough
to die
for
?” the paramedics asked, both at once. They quickly turned
to each other and laughed. “Jinx! Buy me a Coke.”

“
You don’t seem to be
taking my uncle’s death very seriously,” Kristin said as she
crossed the foyer to hold hands with her bereaved
cousins.

“
Well, there’s nothing we
can do to bring him back,” said Ponytail Paramedic. “But, hey, I
just got an idea!”

“
I bet I know what it is,”
Male Whoopie replied.

They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes
like a couple of lovebirds.

Ponytail Paramedic said, “Guess. I bet
you’ll get it.”

“
I know I will. I can read
your mind.”

“
Oh really?” Ponytail
Paramedic’s voice turned sultry and seductive when she said, “Well,
then, tell me what I’m thinking right now.”

Cousin Georgette rolled her eyes and said,
“Ugh, get a room!”

Cousin Beth said, “No, first tell us what
you were thinking.”

“
Oh.” Male Whoopie turned
away from Ponytail Paramedic just long enough to say, “We should
call Professor Turquay to see if he can identify that bite. He
knows everything there is to know about spiders