Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories by Jennifer Crusie Page B

couldn’t sleep, I went down to the kitchen and there was my mother, the big detail freak, with about a quart of red food color and my dress, dying the punch until it matched so that the wedding theme—“Pink of Perfection”—would be carried out in the refreshments.
    I said, “Ma, it’s punch, not the Sistine Chapel,” and without looking up she said, “Caroline, your sister will only get married for the first time once. It has to be perfect.”
    That threw me for a minute, but it never does much good to think about what my mom says since she doesn’t, so I said, “Where does that leave Andy?” and she put the food coloring down and looked at me, and I knew we were going to have a Moment.
    My mom’s big on moments. Like Steph stopping and shooting us that winner smile of hers from the stage when she graduated from high school two weeks ago. Or me picking up the debate cup, except that I got embarrassed because everybody was looking and I didn’t stay at the podium, so Mom didn’t get her fix. “You have to pause, Caroline,” she told me later. “You have to cherish the moment.” Other people’s moms just take pictures. My mom pauses, cherishes, and
then
she takes a picture.
    Of course, maybe I feel that way about it because other people have moments like Steph has moments and I have moments like the one with Andy the Slime last night. I don’t think I’m going to have the kind of life where you want to pause and cherish a lot.
    The biggest moments in my mom’s life, she has told us over and over and over, are going to be when Steph and I get married, which was why she was dyeing the punch, so that when Steph paused behind the punch bowl with Quinn and Darla and me an hour ago, our dresses matched the punch that matched the roses on the cake that matched the roses in Steph’s bouquet, and my mom got her moment.
    Like I told my father, it could be worse, she could be hooked on religion or uppers, so pausing isn’t much to ask. He laughed, so it must have been an okay line.
    Anyway, when my mom paused last night, I knew that’s what we were having, one of those mother and daughter things that she was going to look back on, so I pretended I was Steph and paused, too.
    And then she said, “Caroline, no man is perfect. Choose for potential.”
    If you ask me, Andy’s only potential is as an organ donor, but my mom had a lot of punch to dye, and the last thing I wanted to talk about was the Slime, so I let it drop.
    But it did make me think about Scott again, because he had loads of potential even though I couldn’t talk to him, so I decided to give the Stephanie thing another shot at the wedding reception. It’s not that I’m desperate for somebody, but it would be nice to be with somebody who can talk about things the way my father does. But I hear my father talk about the guys he teaches at the Lima Branch, and I figure college guys must be pretty much the best there is when it comes to brains, but he doesn’t seem to think much of them, and he’s the smartest person I ever met. That was another thing about Scott; when I got to the reception, I saw my father talking to him, so I figured he must be pretty smart because my father gets bored fast.
    Scott had a drink in his hand, and I wanted to look cool, so I went over to the bartender and told him I wanted a gin on the rocks, he said no, so I told him I was part of the wedding party, and he said, no, so I told him I was the bride’s sister, and he said, “Look, kid, I don’t serve twelve-year-olds.” I’m five ten and he thinks I’m twelve? Jerk.
    So when he wasn’t looking, I lifted a bottle of champagne, and he never even caught on.
    Twelve-year-old, my ass.
    Then I went up to Scott, trying to be Stephanie, and I said, “Hi,” like she does, just so happy to be there, except she usually is and I was just nervous. And he said, “Hi,” and I said, “I have some champagne, do you want some?” and he looked around and saw my mother