Cancel the Wedding (25 page)

I glanced over to Elliott to try to snap myself out of it. The bridge of his nose and cheeks were sunburned; he brushed the hair out of his face. He caught my eye and gave me a complex look that said,
Isn't this great? But I know it's probably making you sad. Sorry.
And just like that I was cured of my infatuation with the past and fully reengaged in my infatuation with the present.

I asked Florence about the house at Rutledge Ridge and what it looked like. She relayed a vague report of the house itself, but the elaborate descriptions she gave of the way it smelled when it was filled with Maudy's cooking were painstakingly detailed. Florence reinforced the impression I had gained of Maudy when I had spoken to Buddy about her.

I asked about the school they attended. The first through eighth grades of their schooling occurred in a three-room schoolhouse in the town of Huntley proper. Florence mentioned apologetically that the school was segregated. The school for the black students was located up the mountain. When it came time for high school, the townie kids all went to the prestigious Country Day School, which was a short bus ride through the valley. The country kids had had enough schooling and went to work, and the black kids remained at their school up the mountain.

Florence said, “You know what's funny? The lake took those segregated schools for the white kids in the valley, wiped them both out. But that little school up the hill where the black kids had to go? It's still standing. I think it's a Friends School now. I always thought of that as poetic justice. So much disappeared when they built the lake. The house that my husband, Grant, grew up in”—Florence was counting it off on her fingers—“our school, the church Grant and I got married in, the baseball fields where he, Oliver, and George spent every minute of daylight growing up . . . they're all under the water now. When people asked Grant where we were from his answer was always Atlantis.”

I knew from Florence's presentation to the garden club that Grant had played professional baseball, served in Vietnam, and gone on to become a lawyer. I didn't know anything about George or Oliver.

I said, “I know my mom went on to college. What happened to George and Oliver after high school?” The three of them, George, Janie, and Oliver were apparently one system, one unit. They did everything together, Oliver always screwing something up, George coming in to fix it, Janie smoothing things over.

Florence took her glasses off again and wiped them down with a handkerchief. I think it was more out of habit than a necessary cleaning. No one's glasses needed that much attention. “George was in school with your mom. They went to college together.” She didn't pause long enough for me to process the feeling of surprise at that comment. Florence continued. “I think it was hard for all three of them when your mom and George went off to school. It wasn't long after that when Oliver left for Vietnam.”

Florence gave me the impression that George and Oliver, although identical twins, were complete opposites. George was apparently the steadfast intellect and Oliver was the lovable delinquent.

I asked her about this and a smile bloomed on Florence's face. “You couldn't help but love Oliver. I mean you wanted to beat him silly one minute and then hope he'd bless you with his presence the next. You never knew what might happen when you went out with him, but you knew it'd be a good story if you lived to tell about it.”

I asked, “So what happened to Oliver?” Now I was curious about Oliver too. Add it to the list.

Florence explained that Oliver felt his time to be called up in the draft was imminent. He didn't want to be conscripted into the army so he enlisted in the navy. Florence confided that George had actually been the one to take Oliver's aptitude exams that allowed him to earn a commission.

Logan asked, “They looked that much alike?”

“Well, not if you knew them like we did. But if they were strangers to you, they were identical.”

I asked, “So was Oliver unprepared to be in the navy? I mean if George took his tests?”

Florence shook her head like I had it all wrong. “There wasn't anything Oliver couldn't do in the water, but he would never have passed those written tests. Nowadays we would've recognized it as dyslexia or some other diagnosable disorder. Back then it was just that Olivier wasn't very good with tests. And there wasn't a thing George wouldn't do for him so when Oliver asked him, George said yes. I think George might've regretted it later, after Oliver was shipped out to Vietnam. But he was going somewhere anyway, the army or jail or a ditch after being caught by someone's husband. He just ran too hard and too fast for anything good to come of it. George probably did the right thing. Must've wrecked the two of them when Oliver died though.”

“Did he die in Vietnam?”

Florence was staring out the window toward the lake. The light had changed while we had been sitting here drifting back in time. She said, “Well, I think it was probably the war that killed him, but he didn't die over there.” She began to rummage around in her oversized bag. “He came home, but I guess he was changed by everything.” I wanted to ask her what she meant exactly, but she kept talking. “I wasn't here during that time.” She couldn't seem to find what she was looking for and dumped the bag out on the coffee table. “Where is that darn thing?” Florence looked up briefly. “Grant and I were married and we were living in Florida when Oliver came home. Grant had been playing ball and then he got drafted in the army. I lived on base with the other army wives. When he came home we moved to Birmingham. I worked while he went to law school. I never did come back here, and by then of course ‘here' was underwater.” She pulled a bundle out of the pile on the table and shouted, “Ah-ha!” Then she held up an old envelope yellowed with age and stamped with a red-and-blue “Par Avion” across the top.

She handed it to me. “These are some letters we got from Oliver when he was in the navy. There're some pictures in there too. You're welcome to keep them.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. I pulled out the letters, wanting to read them right there, but also not wanting to be rude.

Florence waved that away. “You're Janie's family so I guess you're his too. You keep them. Besides, what good are they doing him or me stuffed in a box somewhere? All of my old pictures and letters are still in storage from when I moved to the condo after Grant died. This was all I could find in his desk.”

Florence described them for us as I held them up. The first one was a photo of Oliver sitting on a squat green-gray river patrol boat with four other men. Oliver looked just like the pictures we had seen of George. The men on the boat were all smoking; one held a can of beer in his hand. They were smiling at the camera. They looked tan and relaxed and completely unaware of what the next few months probably had in store for them in the Brown Water Navy, as they called the naval forces patrolling the rivers in Vietnam. I flipped the picture over and read the names written on the back: Me, Whitey, Johnnie, Turk, and Slim.

The second picture was obviously taken sometime later, perhaps years later. It showed Oliver standing alone on the bow of his small boat. His hair was long and shaggy. He no longer looked much like George. He was wearing an olive drab flak vest with no shirt underneath to hide his much thinner chest. His camo pants were loose on his waist and cut off above the knee with long strands of threads hanging down and sticking to his tan sweaty legs. He stood there alone staring out at the flat brown river, loosely holding a machine gun at waist height. The sky behind him was gray with the threat of rain.

Elliott spoke up, breaking the spell that had fallen over the room. “Florence, may I get you something to drink?”

The clatter of Elliott mixing drinks in the kitchen allowed Florence the opportunity to move around the room looking at the piles of printouts and articles stacked on the dining room table. A few images caused her to recall things and she shared a few unsolicited stories about George, Oliver, and Janie. Each snippet seemed to have the three of them woven together. The car the three of them bought together when they were fifteen that they could never get to run. The time George almost drowned in the swollen river going after Janie's dog, and how Oliver had had to jump in and rescue him. The huge summer birthday party the three of them always threw together at the barn on the Joneses' property. The way Janie and George were always bailing Oliver out of some trouble with the principal, or the coach, or the sheriff.

Elliott, Logan, Florence, and I took our drinks out to the screen porch. Logan brought a tray of food and repositioned her laptop to keep recording. Dusk was beginning settle on the lake as we indulged in our cocktails. Florence didn't sip; she drank. In no time Elliott was mixing her a third gin and tonic and Florence's self-imposed restrictions were waning.

Logan was nursing a lemonade, her feet tucked underneath her in the rocking chair. She looked over to Florence. “How come they got married so young?”

Florence laughed—her laugh being considerably louder soaked in gin—saying she thought they waited as long as they could. She was inferring that the two of them were having a hard time remaining virgins until the wedding night. I had to resist the urge to put my fingers in my ears and hum loudly.

Florence sounded wistful and nostalgic. “It was a strange time; everything changed that summer, the summer of sixty-six. It was the last year that we were able to be on the river.” She wasn't slurring her speech but it was much looser now, slower. Her accent became much more exaggerated, she sounded more and more like Betty Chatham with each sip. “The dam was under construction and Huntley was being evacuated; most people left to find houses or work somewhere out of the valley.” She was staring at the trees across the lake, but that's not what she saw. She was looking back. “Grant was in Florida playing Triple-A ball. Oliver was getting ready to join the navy. It was the beginning of the end of that time for us. Janie and George just wanted to get married before it all vanished.”

Logan asked, in almost a whisper, “How did they get engaged?”

Florence blinked lazily as she shared the story of the day that George asked Janie to marry him.

A
S
J
ANIE
AND
F
LORENCE
WALKED
the last few hundred feet toward the river they could already hear voices being carried across the water and echoing off the rise of the mountain. Janie stopped in the middle of the overgrown summer brush, her hands out by her side, grazing the tops of the wildflowers and bushes. “It's hard to believe this will all be gone by next summer.”

They reached the Dunk Pool and could see a few friends on the river. Nate was already in the water, swimming toward Margaret on the Overlook, but where was everyone else? Last summer the Dunk Pool had been so crowded that first weekend home from college.

Margaret spotted them. “Hey girls! Janie, where's George?”

Janie looked around the Dunk Pool. “I don't know. I thought he'd be here by now. Where is everyone?” Oliver had been out of sight underwater and he jumped up suddenly, splashing Janie and Florence as they stood at the bank of the river. It was his way of greeting them. He dove back under before they could retaliate.

Florence wiped off the droplets that had landed on the new scarf she wore on her head. “Well, there's Oliver. Nice to see he hasn't changed.”

Nate helped Janie and Florence climb onto the Overlook and then Margaret pulled them into a welcome home hug. Nate explained that this was it; all of their other friends had already left the valley. Everything was changing. Their friends, their town, their river.

Janie sat down on the hot rock, sighing, saying that even her father had changed. When Janie returned from school she was shocked at the physical transformation that had taken place in her father, the Honorable Judge Winchester Rutledge, since winter break. He had become so sedentary and was obviously in so much pain. And Maudy was having heart problems and trouble with her breathing. Janie found the two of them at Rutledge Ridge bickering like an old married couple.

So Janie spent her first days back for summer break making some changes. She moved Maudy out of her house in town and into the guest bedroom, hired a new maid to take care of the cleaning and cooking, and moved a hospital bed into her father's room to make him more comfortable.

Nate laughed. “Janie, only you would hire a maid for your maid.” He gave Margaret a kiss on the top of her head and then plunged off the Overlook and into the Dunk Pool. The cold splash of water provided a moment of relief to the three girls sunning themselves on the blistering rock.

Margaret insisted that Florence tell them absolutely everything about Grant. Did he like Florida? Would he be called up to the majors? Had his shoulder healed properly? As Florence gave her girlfriends the latest news, Janie put her hand to her face, shielding her eyes from the sun. George was nearby. She couldn't see him yet, but she could feel him. She sensed that he was on the far bank of the river.

Janie called out to the seemingly empty bank. “George, you're late!”

Janie jumped into the chilly water and was halfway across the river when George materialized out of nowhere. Margaret shook her head. “How do they do that?”

Florence said, “Who knows.”

George grabbed Janie's hand and pulled her through the water toward him, hugging her tight, holding her up. She rubbed her hand over his newly shorn buzz cut making water splay off it.

He kissed her. He hadn't seen her in a full day and that had been far too long. “Do you think I did the right thing?”

Janie wasn't sure if he'd done the right thing. None of them were, but she knew what he needed her to say. “Yes, of course you did.” Janie's skin was slippery from the silty water; her arms were around his neck and her legs were intertwined with his under the surface.