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Dowd pissing in your man’s mouth would be taken the wrong way, that they would think I was trying to make fun of them. “Jeethes. Jeethes,” what had I said ? And what had I said only a few minutes before about the fat customs officer? Darcy must surely have thought I was taking the piss out of him. I suddenly couldn’t look him in the eye. He seemed like a monster with that ridiculous handlebar moustache, like an aging extra from Gunga Din.
    And then doubleness struck me with deadly force. Where was I? What was I doing away from everyone and everything I had known? I was neither here nor there. And who was I to make fun of Frank Dowd who had been kind enough to put me — a complete stranger — up for the night? Frank and his wife Consuelo in that fine bungalow on the outskirts of Boston. Who’d have thought Frank would have married a Nicaraguan? Frank, whose fifteen-year-old daughter — a redhead with deeply tanned skin — had given up her own bed for me. And how I had slept that night, surrounded by Barbie dolls and pictures of Bruce Springsteen, until I dreamed Frank’s daughter crawled into bed beside me and began raking my thighs and my belly with long white fingernails. I woke up in a pool of spunk. It was my best wet dream ever. In no time, however, I went from the high of that pleasure to the shame of realizing that I had inked a map of Mayo on Frank Dowd’s daughter’s crisp lemon sheets, a stain that she would surely discover. I could barely look at her or Frank or Consuelo the next morning. And even as the plane lifted off from Logan Airport and I knew I was safe, all I could think was: Boston, a town in which I will be forever known as a pervert.

Violet Budd
    Violet Budd both loves and hates her mother. In the months leading up to her wedding, she mostly hates her. Violet knows this is immature. She wants to get over it, but can’t. Her life since her teen years has been a fantasy in which she walks away from her family forever. But guilt keeps pulling her back in, guilt and some kind of socially constructed impulse to be nice.
    Their wedding fight happens on the second day of Violet’s “cutting-them-off-at-the-pass” trip home, as Brian will later call it. Violet and her mother are in the kitchen. Mother and daughter are trawling for just the right approach to the thorny subject of Violet’s impending nuptials. More precisely, Violet’s mother is going through French cuisine recipes. She is beginning to unfold her vision for the ceremony. It is to be formal: black tie for the men, white tux for Brian. Violet cackles, internally. The wedding dress will be a taffeta and satin strapless gown with embroidery and cinched waist detail. Beading tucked into the skirt pickups and continuing onto the chapel-length train, the gown will be pearl white with a silver trim. Violet suspects that her mother has either studied the dress in a catalogue or spoken with a designer. The reception will be held in a marquee in the back garden of her parents’ house — the bougainvillea along the terrace will be in full bloom. Catering can be by none other than Algernon. Violet’s mother sets a cap of four hundred and fifty guests; Violet imagines her mother imagining them twittering like birds and sipping from bottomless fonts of sparkling wine. Her mother drops tantalizing hints of a tropical, all-expense-paid honeymoon. But then she goes too far, pulling out a stack of Bridezilla magazines from under the counter, a sure sign they are about to get into the nitty-gritty. Violet experiences an overwhelming urge of put her foot down and decides to act on it. She doesn’t care if her mother has made non-refundable bookings of some or all the things she has just mentioned.
    Violet places her hand over her mother’s hand. She tells her, as gently as she can, that she will under no circumstance agree to that kind of wedding.
    Uncharacteristically, her