There was a sense of relief, now that the visitation, funeral, and the burial ceremony at the cemetery were over. The whole group of family and friends should have been able to let their hair down and enjoy each other’s company. It was time to hang out and have some casual conversation and get to know each other again. That was the plan, anyway, until Brette rolled in the baggage cart which was filled not with luggage but with alcohol. She stopped by the liquor store after she left the cemetery and stocked up on so much alcohol that the concierge had to help her bring it all into the party room.
This was to be Brette’s show and she had a captive audience.
Now that all of the official parts of the funeral weekend were over, Brette decided to get drunk. After a couple of whiskey sours and a lot of wine, Brette felt like her shackles had been taken off and she could really let loose with her offensive comments. “Hey, Darlene!” she said to her cousin. “You have a great butt! A teenager’s butt! How in the world do you keep it up?” Darlene demurred that she does a lot of walking in her neighborhood after work. The alcohol blocked all of Brette’s social cues so when she said to cousin Gina, “you are so thin. I’ve seen beanpoles with more weight on them than you have on your body. Do you think that is healthy?” Cousin Gina didn’t take that comment so well, having struggled with her body image for her whole life, so she refused to acknowledge Brette’s questions.
Brette had no filter when she was drunk or high and curses a lot by dropping the f-bomb. Her cussing and lewd remarks came out of context and she would not be deterred. For example, when Gina tried to change the subject and talk about something safe, she decided to talk about the election. Brette blurted out, “one of the benefits of being a politician was that you get a lot of blow jobs.” Darlene’s lip curled when Brette said it and the conversation came to a grinding halt. After a few quiet moments, Brette loudly stated, “I think that grandma was gay!”
George knew that there was no way for him to compete with his drunken sister, especially since he had been nursing his only beer for the after party, so he left the party room to get away from Brette. He needed some space and knew that if he spend any time at all with his sister that he was sure to blow up at her. Three of his cousins were standing around in the foyer and George visited with them. As he was talking to Billy, the group heard a guttural noise coming from the party room. “What was that noise?” asked cousin Billy. “Oh that was my sister. She makes that noise when she is in heat.” The comment fell flat and even George had to note that his joke wasn’t funny. Billy let him off the hook by saying, “I don’t know. She could’ve made that noise because she was in heat.”
After a few minutes of idle conversation, one by one, everyone who had been in the party room with Brette came out to join the smaller group in the foyer. Cousin Bobby marched up to George and asked, “What are we going to do about Brette?” Apparently, she found the conversation was lacking, and decided to put her favorite CD in the player and then cranked the volume up as high as it would go, driving all of the other guests from the room. When she realized that everyone else had left, she waddled out to join the family in the foyer, and tried to pick up the conversation where she left it before she blasted the music out of the speakers.
Brette had such a tin ear when it comes to picking up on social clues that she had no idea that everyone had left to get away from her. She had become a caricature of herself: drunk and high and prattling on endlessly about how she was a genius in saving money by buying everything on sale. She was a lousy companion because she was only interested in herself. For example, she will ask a question only because she wants to answer it herself. If George tried to answer then Brette quickly loses interest and changes the subject so that she can focus on her problems and interests.
Outside of the party room, in the foyer, it appeared as though Sarah was holding court, but really she sat in one place because getting up and moving around her bulk was too much of a chore. Sometimes people would go and sit next to Sarah to keep her company, and then the oldest sister would take a lot of pot shots by speaking in a low voice. “Did you see the ring that Madison wears? Isn’t that the same piece of jewelry that Mom owned? Do you think that she stole it?” If she was talking to someone who was close to Madison then she would change her target for fear of being found out that she was the one who was spreading the rumors. “I don’t see why George had to send Mom to the most expensive nursing home in Memphis. There are plenty of others that didn’t cost as much.” What Sarah really meant to say was that the upkeep for her mother was costing so much that she wouldn’t inherit a lot of money and that upset her since she was always talking poor.
Brette gets high first thing in the morning. On the day after the funeral she sat in the smoking area outside of the hotel and took out her kit. On one side of the box was the marijuana and on the other side were the tools and pipe to make smoking the weed quick, easy, and without mess. She was clearly hung over after dancing the night away at a gay bar that Matthew and Madison had introduced her to.
Now, on the morning after, Brette was still boozy; completely without energy and looked like she might throw up at any minute. She hadn’t bothered to shower or change clothes from the day before, believing that the family could either deal with a “Stinky Brette” or a “Late Brette.” George would have liked a “Brette who didn’t show up at all.”
Still, she was able to summon up the energy to blame George for our families not getting together for the holidays. She claimed that because George wasn’t getting along with Terry and Sarah that he had ruined Thanksgiving and Christmas. This was a significant rewriting of history and so George didn't even bother to reply. He didn’t want to get bogged down in an argument in a public place.
The parry and thrust continued. If Brette couldn’t get George to take the bait about the holidays, then she would continue to probe for more sore points. “You know that you have a huge stie on your eye. Don’t you think that you should have it removed?” “Thanks for pointing that out. I would have missed it if I hadn’t seen it in the mirror every time that I look in a mirror.” Then said, under her breathe, “You has gotten fat!” George has seen this show before and refused to let any of the barbs take hold
Brette had one last punch to throw, and she had been saving it up for a while. She has no filter between what she thinks and what she says and has a long history of embarrassing George in front of friends and family members and then blowing it off like she didn’t do anything wrong. “If someone were to stick a piece of coal up your butt they could come back in a week and pull out a diamond.”
She wouldn’t back down and George had to find a way to dissuade his sister from this train of commentary or he may punch her. He knew that Brette and Wendy were friends in high school and he told Brett that he still loved Wendy even though he hadn’t seen her in years. It was a revelation; a gift that George could give to Brette. He had opened up about something very private to assuage any hard feelings that Brette may still have. What could have been a nice moment turned into something ugly as Brette’s only acknowledgement of George’s secret was to give him a sly smile. It wasn’t a smile that meant that George had entrusted her with something so personal; it was that now she had something on George that she could tuck away and use against him another time.
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