Julia 03 - Miss Julia Throws a Wedding (25 page)

“Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie said, “these chairs are awfully little and spindly. I’m not sure Miss Mildred Allen can fit on one of them. She might need two, the way she spreads out. You think they’ll hold her?”

“Lord, Hazel Marie,” I said. “I can’t worry about that now.” But as I lined up another row, I went on, “On second thought, maybe we should see that she gets one of the dining room chairs. I’ll tell Mr. Pickens to watch for her, and keep her away from these. We sure don’t need another catastrophe, which it would be if one crumpled up under her.”

When one of the movers brought the receipt for me to sign,
he said, “We’ll send somebody later today to check that piano, be sure it’s in tune.” Which relieved my mind considerably. Then, as he gave me the carbon copy, he added, “Got a lot of traffic on this street, don’t you?”

“Not usually,” I said, glancing over his shoulder as we stood in the door and, sure enough, that steady stream of cars, vans and pickups was still at it.

I didn’t know where they’d come from or where they were going, but it came to me that there might be some street-repair work going on somewhere and traffic was being rerouted along Polk. It didn’t make much difference to me, as long as they were cleared out by the next day, but while I watched the rental company’s truck ease out into the street, a bottleneck happened right in front of my eyes. The Watering Can’s delivery van pulled out of the traffic and edged to the curb, just as the rental truck made a sharp turn out of the driveway, blocking both lanes of the narrow street. Between the people jammed up on the sidewalk and the cars jammed up on both sides of the rental truck, my quiet street looked like rush hour in downtown Atlanta. I stood on the porch, my hands on my hips, surveying the confusion. While the men in the rental truck and Harriet in the delivery van had a number of unpleasant things to say to each other, I noticed that a good many of the occupants in the cars seemed content to wait out the situation. They leaned out the car windows, staring and pointing at the Family Life Center. I intended to tell Pastor Ledbetter that was proof I wasn’t the only person in town who thought the thing was a blight on the landscape.

I couldn’t stand to watch the confusion and went back into the house. Before long, Harriet came puffing up on the porch, carrying two huge Boston ferns in hanging baskets.

“What’s going on, Mrs. Springer?” she asked, putting down the baskets and wiping her forehead with her arm. “Where’re all these cars coming from? My goodness, it’s hot.”

“It certainly is. I’ll have Lillian bring you some iced tea. And as for the traffic, I think they’re working on some of those potholes somewhere and have the streets blocked off. Little Lloyd, make yourself useful and help Miss Harriet bring things in.”

As I went back through the living room, Hazel Marie was taking a dust cloth to the chairs, going over each one to be sure they were clean and ready for our guests.

“Harriet’s going to bring in the arch in a minute, Hazel Marie. You might have to move a few chairs so she can get it in.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll help her.”

I went on into the kitchen and was brought up short at the sight of milk bottles and ketchup bottles and mustard jars and mayonnaise jars and plastic bowls, with and without lids covering every inch of space on the counters. Lillian was bent over reaching into the open refrigerator.

“I’m cleanin’ out this ’frigerator, if you wonderin’,” she said. “I got to make room for that caterin’ lady when she come tomorrow.”

“Was all this stuff in the refrigerator?”

“You be surprised what was in this thing. I been th’owin’ out, right an’ left. If anybody want any lunch, they better grab it now, ’cause it gonna be gone pretty quick.”

“I guess we better get in here, then, and get it while we can. I’ll call Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd.”

As I started out, Lillian said, “Tell Little Lloyd I already got him a peanut butter an’ banana sam’ich made. You an’ Miss Hazel Marie got to fend for yo’selves.”

“Yes, well, we’ll bring in something for supper, or maybe we’ll all go somewhere. So don’t worry about what to fix.”

“I wadn’t aimin’ to,” she said, dumping the ice tray into the sink. “Oncet I get this kitchen clean, I don’t want nobody messin’ it up again.”

I walked back to stand beside the counter. “Lillian, when
you finish here, why don’t you take off early and go home. You must have a million things to do to get ready for tomorrow. You got a new dress, didn’t you?”

She wrung out a dishcloth and smiled, her gold tooth flashing in her mouth. “I got the prettiest dress in town. I know Miss Binkie’s colors, and I wanted to match up with ’em. My dress is hot pink satin, an’ I got a matchin’ hat, a little tiny thing with a veil on it.”

“It sounds lovely.” I leaned against the counter and bowed my head. “Oh, Lillian, I don’t know how I’m going to get through it all.”

“I know what you mean, an’ my heart ’bout to break, too. If Miss Binkie don’t marry Coleman, we gonna have to watch that pore man suffer every livin’ day.” Tears stood in Lillian’s eyes. Then she gave the dishcloth a final wring and said, “If I didn’t love Miss Binkie like my own chile, I’d say it jus’ downright cussedness what make her do such a thing.”

My sentiments, exactly.

Chapter 25

Realizing that I hadn’t heard Raymond’s lawn mower for some little while, I went outside to see how he was coming along. I found him in the front yard, standing by the crape myrtle with a pair of pruning shears in his hand. Instead of using them, though, he was gazing across the street at the Family Life Center.

“Raymond,” I said, startling him so that he looked straight at me. “Have you finished the backyard?”

“Sí.”
He bobbed his head and immediately started snipping a boxwood beneath the crape myrtle.

“Good. The front shouldn’t take you long. If you need to move those potted plants the florist put out, go ahead and do it. Just put them back where she had them.” I paused, looking around to see what else needed to be done. “Maybe give everything a good watering, and be sure all the weeds’re pulled. Little Lloyd made a good start on that the other day. You know, Raymond, a row of annuals along the foundation shrubs would look good, wouldn’t it? Impatiens would be nice, don’t you think? I should’ve thought of them earlier in the week, but if the nursery has some in full bloom, would you have time to plant them for me today?”

Raymond was such an agreeable man, nodding and saying
Sí
to everything I suggested. It was a pleasure doing business with him, even though his eyes kept sliding away toward the building that was the bane of my existence.

“Well, carry on,” I said, going back into the house to call the nursery for an urgent delivery.

Little Lloyd was finishing his lunch, so he overheard me place my order with the nurseryman. He immediately volunteered to help Raymond set them out.

“I better help Ramón,” he said. “Show me where you want them, Miss Julia, so we’ll be sure to get them right.”

“I’ve already told him.”

“Yessum, I know, but tell me, too.”

I did and, leaving them to it, wandered through the downstairs rooms, checking for last-minute things to do. Harriet had placed the arch of greenery in front of the fireplace with tall multibranched candlestands on each side. She’d also placed white wicker plant stands in the corners of the room, waiting for the arrangements she’d put on them the next morning.

The dining room table was shining with lemon polish and the glow of silver serving pieces. I straightened the row of linen napkins and moved a tray an inch to the left, imagining how it would look with the centerpiece that I’d told Harriet had to be spectacular. I was trying to keep my mind occupied so I wouldn’t worry about there not being anything to celebrate, come the next day.

By the time Raymond and Little Lloyd finished planting a row of white impatiens in front of the boxwoods, I had to say the yard looked festive enough to change Binkie’s mind if anything could. After thanking Raymond and paying him for his good work, I walked across the street and spoke to the man I assumed to be the foreman of the construction site. He was the only one standing around watching the others work, so it was a good guess.

“Sir, I want you to know that we’re hoping to have a wedding tomorrow right across the street. You can see how hard we’ve worked on the yard, so I’d appreciate it if you’d have your men clean off the sidewalk over here before you leave
today. And furthermore, if you have any brick dust or sawdust or any other kind of dust to spew out into the neighborhood, please defer it until Monday. It’ll be bad enough then, but it just won’t be acceptable today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking at me from under his baseball cap, which he’d not had the courtesy to remove. “That young pastor’s already asked us to do that.”

“What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t think he’d remember to speak to you. Well, thank you in advance for cleaning up the mess you’ve made over here.”

Going back across the street, I noted that the cars and pickups, which we’d had so many of that morning, had eased off to a trickle. I hoped it stayed that way.

As the day was wearing on, I discussed with Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd where we should go for supper. Eating out was not a favorite of mine, but if we disturbed Lillian’s kitchen by trying to cook, she wouldn’t be fit to live with. Little Lloyd wanted to go to some pizza parlor that was so noisy it interfered with digestion, and Hazel Marie suggested Hal’s Barbeque House. My choice was the S & P cafeteria, where we could each get what we wanted except, as Little Lloyd pointed out, pizza and barbecue.

While we were trying to decide where to go, the doorbell rang, announcing Emma Sue Ledbetter, laden with a casserole, salad and rolls.

“My famous dessert is in the car,” she said. “I’ll bring it in as soon as I deposit these in your kitchen.” And she zipped past me, bearing her gifts, while I rolled my eyes at the thought of her famous dessert. A dump cake, the name of which put me off considerably, consisting of any number of cans of fruit and boxes of cake mix dumped into a Pyrex dish, stirred and baked.

“You didn’t have to do this, Emma Sue,” I said, following her back to the kitchen. It burned me up, knowing that she’d
brought supper to make me feel guilty for jumping on her about those blasted bumper stickers. Unbeknownst to her, though, I didn’t feel the least twinge. “We were planning to go out.”

“No, no, you don’t want to do that. I know you’re all terribly busy getting ready for what I know will be the sweetest wedding, and you won’t have time to cook. Now, this is a chicken and rice casserole, made with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, and this is a congealed salad with sour cream between the layers. You won’t believe what I made my dump cake with this time.”

“Don’t tell me, Emma Sue,” I said, feeling queasy already. I never liked to know what made up the food I was eating. “Let it be a surprise. A nice surprise, I’m sure. You are so thoughtful to do this, but I wish you hadn’t.” I knew that Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd were going to wish the same.

“Of course I should’ve,” she said, as she took tinfoil off her dishes. “You might want to run this casserole in the oven for a few minutes. Now let me go get the dessert.”

“I’ll walk out with you and get it. I know you’re busy, too.”

We walked out to her car, and she handed me the dish. “A little ice cream on top just sets this off,” she said. “Oh, Julia, I’m so looking forward to the wedding. I just wish Larry were here to be a part of it. You know,” she went on, lowering her voice, “I wasn’t sure I ought to attend. I had to pray long and hard about it, but the Lord told me it would send the wrong message if I stayed away.”

“Well, I’m glad He gave you permission to come. But you know, Emma Sue, times have changed, and you don’t always have to stay home when your husband’s out of town. A lot of wives attend things by themselves these days.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that. It’s just that, well, I’m sure you know why those two young people are in such a rush to marry.” She gave me a knowing look that made me step back
a pace. “And when I heard, I really thought you should’ve stayed out of it and let them sneak off to marry without any fanfare like they’re getting. I hope you’ll forgive me for thinking you were wrong to put on a big show; I really had to wrestle with the Lord about you. But then He pointed out to me that some people just haven’t progressed as far on their spiritual journey as others have. But don’t you worry, you’re at the top of my prayer list, because you know I love you in the Lord, Julia.” She put her hand on my arm and patted it to confirm her words. “And as far as Binkie and her deputy are concerned, I’ve come to see that as long as two people are doing the right thing, we shouldn’t judge when they do it.”