A Wedding Invitation (5 page)

As the teacher’s assistant went out to smoke, some of the girls pulled Carson and Brice onto the floor, and then the kids yanked on my hands until I was on my feet. Madonna’s “Borderline” shimmered off the wooden walls, the students enjoying the beat but having little idea what the words “You just keep pushing my love over the borderline” actually meant.

Under a squeaky fan we laughed and danced with the students. Carson and Brice caught my eye, clearly enjoying themselves. The rats in the rafters had grown quiet and remained that way. I saw only one scamper over the ceiling beams before hiding from my sight.

Lien again tried to enter the party, but Huy told her to go home. That much Vietnamese I understood. She exited the classroom, only to perch herself by one of the window slats and cackle like the hens in Dovie’s backyard.

When Bao entered the classroom again after smoking a few cigarettes, three girls—my favorite students in this particular class—surrounded him. After a few minutes, he nodded and said to me, “They have gift for you.”

From a secluded spot under a bench where discarded pairs of flip-flops were scattered, one of the girls retrieved a narrow cardboard box about the size of a wallet. Carefully, she came over to where I was seated being photographed by one of the camp photographers with six boys, who all scrambled to be in the picture with me.

Circling me, the children watched as I opened the gift. Lifting the lid, I pulled out a white piece of material embroidered with delicate yellow flowers that looked sort of like tulips. The material unfolded and I saw that it was a handkerchief. Looking into their sweaty faces, I said, “Thank you!”

The girls giggled, and then a boy asked a question.

The girls giggled again.

I stood waiting as the girls and Bao talked. Sure enough, a translation followed. “Her mother sew this for you.” Bao indicated the smallest of the threesome.

“Oh, thank you.” I fingered the cloth and attempted a bit of Vietnamese. “
Cam on ban
.” I hoped I’d pronounced the phrase correctly. “It’s very nice.” I smiled at the small girl. “Tell your mother thank-you for me.”

But my words were overcome by the increased volume of the tape player. Michael Jackson was singing “Thriller.” Again.

“Turn it down.” I raised my voice to be heard. After no reaction from my students, I tried again. “Turn the music down. Please.”

Huy rushed over to the bench where the tape player sat, and soon I could hear myself think again.

Before the curfew of nine, there was time for one more dance, and after Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” ended, I shut off the music. I sent the students home to their billets with their graduation certificates, wishing them a good night. A few were not eager to leave; they wanted to dance some more.

“We come back tomorrow and see you, teacha,” a number of them said.

I just smiled, knowing that I had two days off since my classes had ended for the term. My new classes wouldn’t start until Monday.

Later, after sweeping the classroom of candy wrappers and forgotten straws, Carson, Brice, and I walked home together, back to our dorms. Rain started to fall, and then it came down like a waterfall. We found shelter on a small roofed stage in a grassy area. The stage had been built for the performances that happened periodically in the camp.

Carson wiped water droplets from his face; a few glistened on his eyelashes. On the stage he began to dance and sing, “You just keep pushing my love over the borderline!”

Brice and I laughed.

“If your parents could see you now,” I said. “They probably think you came here to be a dignified teacher, not a performer.”

Carson sang a few more lines from the song and then looked my way. “I know what my mother would say.”

“What would that be?”

“Oh, she’d tell some story about how I was born singing. No one else in the hospital thought my wailing was a song, but I was different from the other newborns. I actually sang.”

I smiled as he talked, trying to imagine what he looked like as an infant.

“And your father?” asked Brice. “What would he say if he could hear and see you now?”

Looking at the floor of the stage, Carson replied, “Not sure. But I think he’d smile at me from Heaven.”

I felt my stomach tingle.

Carson’s eyes were soft, vulnerable.

“He died?” I asked.

Carson blinked a few times and lowered his head.

“How long ago?” I edged closer to him.

“Three years.”

“That’s just like yesterday!” The words flew out a bit louder than I’d intended for them to sound. “I mean,” I quickly added, “it’s so recent.”

His tears did not shock me, but Brice had to look away. I reached into my skirt pocket and handed him my new handkerchief. I thought he might push it aside, but he took it and wiped a tear that was suspended on his cheek.

“I lost my dad, too,” I said as the rain slowed its pace against the roof. “He was only forty.”

Carson put an arm around me and drew me to his chest.

We stood like that for a few moments, and then when the rain relented, we all three stepped out from the enclosed stage and continued our walk home. The air was saturated with dampness. No one spoke. Even Brice was without his usual jokes.

As we approached our agency’s main building where the admin staff worked, I asked Carson if he had a picture of his parents. He told me he had one in his room but first had to go into the admin building to get the lesson plan book he’d left there earlier.

I watched him go inside, noting the way his broad shoulders filled his shirt, and then, realizing I needed to use the bathroom, went inside after him. The women’s restroom held two stalls, and I remembered to use the one that locked.

When I came out, I couldn’t find Carson anywhere. Figuring he was waiting for me outside, I looked around for him. When I didn’t see him, I went toward his dorm across the soggy grass.

The building was quiet. I heard a radio softly playing a song in Tagalo from someone’s room. I walked down the narrow hallway, and when I got to Carson’s room I paused. His door was ajar; I knocked, listened, and then pushed it open. I could wait for him in here. I sat on his bed, looked up at the photo of Mindy, and frowned. She had a perky smile, a wide set of teeth, and straight brown hair, giving her a model-like quality. I sat there recalling all the things he’d told me about her—her fondness for onion rings and Caesar salad, how she had a golden retriever named Ranch and a blue parrot from Peru.

My eyes roamed to the left of his single bed, to his desk that held a cassette player, a lopsided stack of paperbacks, and two red pens. We liked to kid him about his love of red pens, the ones he used to grade his students’ papers. I stood to straighten the books, and as I did, I saw a lined sheet of paper crammed with writing. Something told me that I knew better, but I swatted that thought away like I swatted at flies and mosquitoes when they buzzed around my dorm room. I picked up the paper and read:
She’s naive and, although pretty, she isn’t intelligent
.

Curious, and yet at the same time hearing a warning signal rap against my mind, I continued. Above this line was my name—my name in Carson’s handwriting. He always wrote in all caps, even when he wrote on the blackboard in his classroom. His Es were like backward 3s. This letter’s penmanship was a little sloppier than usual, and each letter jarred against my heart.

But I couldn’t stop; my feet were like lead, and although I knew I shouldn’t, I read more.

Samantha’s a big flirt, and you know how I feel about flirts. She’s someone to hang out with when there’s not much else to do
.

My whole body grew hot. Shaking, I lifted one foot from the floor, hoping it would move. When my legs cooperated, I left his room. With a quick turn down the hallway I found the front door, bumping my forehead on the doorjamb.

It was the first night in a long time that I couldn’t breathe due to tears. I could have used my new handkerchief, but Carson had forgotten to give it back to me.

The next day at breakfast, Carson asked about the bruise on my forehead. He also wanted to apologize. “After going to the administration building, I looked around for you, and when I didn’t see you, Brice and I decided to play Ping-Pong.”

“Oh? Who won?” I feigned interest.

“I lost.”

So did I
, I thought. The impact of the words from his letter to Mindy still punctured my heart. I wanted to discuss how his words had hurt me, but how could I admit I’d read his letter? So I searched for something else we could talk about—the New People’s Army, the Vietnam War, the horrendous actions of the Vietcong, or, on a lighter note, how my aunt Dovie raised monarch butterflies. But, as I sipped my coffee, I figured it would all be wasted on a man who didn’t find me intelligent anyway.

seven

A
s I drive to Dovie’s after the reception, the sky is bountiful with pastry-puff clouds lit by a shimmering sunset. My feet are sore from dancing and I look forward to taking off my heels. At least in the Philippines the flip-flops we wore didn’t hurt my feet, even after dancing or walking across the camp from one neighborhood to the other.

At her chalky white two-story I park my car in the gravel driveway. Milkweed, her overfed tabby cat seated on the olive green love seat on the screened-in porch, greets me like a purring Southern hostess.

I walk up the three brick steps and knock on the front door, which stands heavy against the right side of the porch.

Within seconds, Dovie appears in a periwinkle cotton dress and fuzzy polka-dotted slippers. “How was the wedding?” she asks after she kisses my cheek, tells me I’ve gotten taller, and ushers me into a kitchen smelling of baked bread.

Beanie, looking thinner than the last time I visited, stands in a pair of jeans, an oversized flannel shirt, and an apron, stirring a tall pot with a slender spoon. “Long time no see,” she says.

“Hi, Beanie.” I know not to embrace her; like my mother, Beanie resists affection. She claims it’s the Chinese side of her that causes her to be this way. “Smells good,” I say as I peer into the pot and see chunks of chicken and flat noodles in a velvety broth.

Beanie grins. If you compliment her on much else, she won’t accept it, but she does believe she can conjure up a tasty meal.

It’s nearly eight, just about dinner hour for Dovie and her boarders. Dovie collects people like squirrels store food. Young, old, wealthy, or miserly, my aunt takes them in. Beanie’s history is long and dark, although I have never heard all the details in sequence.

“So, how was the wedding?” Beanie pauses from her stirring like she’s waiting for a good story. “Tell us.”

“It wasn’t the right one.” I place my clutch bag on a clear spot on the counter.

“What?”

“My friend didn’t get married.” Pulling off my heels, I sink into a cushioned kitchen chair. Through my panty hose, I see blisters on both of my big toes and wince.

“Oh,” says Beanie. “Those kinds of happenings do happen, so I’ve heard. The bride gets cold feet and never makes it to the wedding.”

“She made it. She just isn’t my friend.” Standing, I put my shoes over to the side of the room near Milkweed’s food dish and begin to remove my stockings.

“You and her got in a fight?” Beanie’s face lights up like one of the pillar candles I just spent an uncertain hour with. “That can happen. There are times I know I shouldn’t, but something comes over me that I just can’t get ahold of and tame. Did you win? Must have because you still look pretty good.”

“No.”

Beanie frowns. “Are you hurt?”

“Only my toes.”

“I hate it when someone steps on mine. Makes me all kinds of annoyed.”

Beanie is like a train out of control. I put an end to all her illusions, something we often have to do when she wants to believe the nonsensical. “No, no fighting.”

“But she’s still not your friend?”

Moistening my lips, I start to explain. “I thought that my friend Avery was getting married and that she’d invited me to her wedding. But there must have been some mix-up. I didn’t know anyone at the wedding and she wasn’t even—”

Aunt Dovie interrupts. “
Catalina Afternoon
.”

Beanie’s brow is furrowed. “Really?”

I search their faces. Is this some kind of code? “What?”

“
Catalina Afternoon
is a movie we saw. Friends end up at the wrong wedding.” She hands heavy pottery bowls one at a time to Beanie.

Well, I think, if I’d known that a movie title would set Beanie straight, I would have tried that tactic from the first.

Beanie takes a bowl and ladles soup into its deep opening.

Deciding I should make myself useful, I take the bowl and set it at the table.

Beanie hands me another bowl. “Those friends didn’t realize they were at the wrong wedding until it was too late. Tragic, in an odd sort of way.”

As we sit at the kitchen table with a spring breeze blowing through the opened window, my aunt offers a prayer of thanksgiving to God.

After her joyful “Amen and amen!” I ask, “So, you’ve seen a movie about someone who ends up at the wrong wedding?”