I twirl Dani around for the final chords of the song.
Mom reaches up, and the lead guitarist swings her up onto the stage.
She stands in front of the microphone, a huge smile on her face.
“I just want to say”—she pauses for dramatic effect—“that I really hope my kids didn’t plan any party games tonight. You know how I feel about games at parties.”
Everyone laughs at the joke.
“But seriously… Duran Duran. That’s so crazy. You guys are my favorite band.” She starts to get choked up. “When I was kidnapped—snatched off the street, whatever—at first I was scared, then I was pissed off, because I was planning on going to the Duran Duran concert and then couldn’t. Obviously. Bummer. And then you guys weren’t touring when I was rescued. When Frank—there’s Frank, my hero—when he rescued me. You really should have been there. It was like a movie. All ‘bang bang, I’m the FBI, and I’m emotionally stunted, and I have a drinking problem.’”
“Aurora!” Her mom is horrified.
“And then I had kids—well, more kids. But now I’m here at a Duran Duran concert—my own personal concert! It’s weird how life works out. You get so busy, the years pass, and you look up, and time has gone by so quickly.” She clutches the microphone with both hands.
“But you meet all these cool people, and you get to do all this cool stuff, and the coolest people I’ve met on this planet are my kids. Ryan, Bridget, Hannah, Max, Sean, and of course, Graham.” She smiles at me.
Dani squeezes my hand.
“I’m so happy to be your mom. And obviously all the guilt-tripping works”—she laughs at her own joke—“because ta-da! Big party! All to celebrate me. And you, Frank. But mostly me.” She briefly poses with her hands under her chin. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is a pickle fountain, which I did not know was a thing but will be featured at every large gathering from here on out. Drink, fuck, be merry!”
“Aurora!” her mom yells.
“Whoo!” Mom cheers and gives the crowd the middle finger. “Rock on! Whoo!”
The band laughs then starts hammering their guitars for another ’80s song.
“Let me check on that bartender.” Dani squeezes me. “Gran says he has a habit of seducing guests. That’s how he and Gran met.”
“Why did you hire him?”
“He’s an artist with cocktails,” she says simply. “Also, he’s highly entertaining. Even my mom thinks so.”
“Which is saying something.”
“Exactly.”
I hang back on the periphery of the party, making polite chitchat with some of Mom’s more distant relatives.
“That was nice of you to do this for your mom,” Frank says stiffly, coming up beside me.
“I wasn’t going to come. Dani made me.”
We stare out at the sea of people.
“I think I might have come on a little bit strong at the beginning. It’s hard for me to trust after… everything,” Franksays haltingly, “but obviously Dani seems to really care about you.”
“You think so?”
“Well…” Frank runs a hand through his short gray hair. “I have friends with kids about your age—they got started a little earlier than me, of course. They say that their daughters-in-law basically stole their sons. Convinced them to cut off from their families. Their sons gave them all sorts of excuses—it’s easier because of the kids to see the mom’s family, she doesn’t feel like she should have to travel, she doesn’t like his mom, whatever.”
“Dani’s not like that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Frank is silent for a moment. Then he says, “But honestly, Dani would have been within her right to, you know, tell you that it would be better for you to forget all of this. Cut us all off.”
He turns to me. “I know how my relatives, how your mom’s relatives, talk about you. I’m not stupid. I was paid to be observant for a living.”
