Liberty Street (22 page)

Then he says, “Martha thinks we should call off the wedding.”

“What?” Frances says. “Call it off?”

“If you don't want to marry me, you can say so. I'll understand.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I won't blame you if you want to change your mind,” Joe says. “Martha thinks I might have pushed you into this.”

Pushed her into it? He's barely spoken ten words about the wedding. She wonders if he's telling the truth about Martha, or if her father has taken him aside and said his piece.

She doesn't know how to respond, so she says, “Why would I call it off? I love you.”

And the minute she says “I love you”—which she has never said before—she thinks it might not be true. How would she know? What does she know about love? Nothing. She's utterly confused by what she's done, what she is about to do, what she wants, why he is telling her to reconsider . . . and she starts to cry. She hates crying. She hated all those weepy girls at school crying over boyfriends and complications that were about as difficult as deciding what colour lipstick to wear, and she can't stand whatever is making her feel this way.

She can tell that Joe doesn't know what to say to her. “Don't do that,” he says, squeezing her shoulder awkwardly.

She tries to shove him away, but that isn't really what she wants. What she wants is for him to squeeze harder, swallow her up, and she finds his mouth with hers, asks for his kiss—craves it—even though she can smell the alcohol, and then his hands are all over her, under her sweatshirt, the zipper in her jeans down, his hand between her legs, and she parts her legs for him and is willing to go on,
all the way
, as she has heard the girls at school say, to hell with that grade nine public health nurse,
keep your knees together
, but she's sobbing now, sobbing like a child, and Joe pushes her away, saying, “Stop. Stop that.” She doesn't know if he means the
crying or the other, the way she wants him. “No,” she says, her hand searching for his belt buckle, but he pushes it away, roughly, and says again, “Stop that.”

She moves away from him and straightens her clothes, pulls up her zipper, dismayed by her loss of control, as though she is the one who's been drinking, ashamed of her desire, and then Joe says, “Maybe Martha's right. You're too young.”

Too young for what? It's not clear.

She says, “My mother doesn't want us to get married either, but I'm not letting her make my decision for me. Do you want Martha to make yours? She wouldn't approve of any girl you wanted to marry, no matter how old.”

Joe seems to be thinking about that. He takes out his tobacco and rolls a cigarette, and they sit in the darkness while he smokes it, saying nothing. Then he drives her home.

In the yard, he says, “If you haven't changed your mind, I won't mention it again.” She counts to ten—tap, tap, tap, her old trick—her stomach in a knot, and she thinks, Everyone feels this way before they get married. How could you not—it's the rest of your life.

“I haven't,” she says. It'll be a frosty Friday when Martha Fletcher decides what happens in her life.

That night, tap, tap, tap, her fingers unable to stop. When she gets up into the hundreds, she loses count.

A
TRIP TO
Yellowhead. To buy Frances shoes to go with the blue dress. A doctor's appointment to acquire the “precautions,” because Alice doesn't want her talking to the local doctor about such a thing. The cake decorations (even though Frances argued that a cake was not necessary). Then home again. Housecleaning. Someone to perform the
ceremony, the United Church minister with the long hair, who still lives in Uncle Vince's house, and who insists on meeting with Joe and Frances before he'll agree to come to the farm and do the honours. He asks Frances if he can bring his guitar to the wedding and sing, any song she likes, but Frances says no, no music.

Food to prepare for the reception. Flowers to order. Wedding napkins. The invitation list includes a few of the Moons' neighbours, also farmers. Alice says if the wedding is going to be in her house, it's going to be a proper wedding so it can't be said that her daughter has run off behind her back, up the duff or with something else to hide. No friends of Joe's are invited—he doesn't want any friends there, just that horrible Martha on his guest list—but surprise . . . Myrna Samples is coming.

Frances has no idea why she asked Myrna to her wedding, except that she happened to run into her at the gas station and they had a laugh about what a loser Daphne was, and before Frances knew it she was telling Myrna about the wedding.
Just a small wedding, nothing fancy. I'm wearing a blue velvet dress instead of a white one, just to be different, I guess
. . . Then Myrna told Frances that she had been planning to wear a green tie-dyed dress when she married Buddy, only that wasn't happening now and she was going to make curtains for her bedroom out of the fabric. Frances impulsively asked her if she would come to the wedding, and Myrna said, “Might as well, since I won't be going to my own anytime soon.” Then she told Frances that Buddy Hynde had been cheating on her with some girl named Pamela from another town. “There I was, pregnant,” she said, “and there he was, acting as though he had nothing to do with that and I was put on earth just to
keep him from fulfilling his potential. As if he ever had any in the first place.”

Frances can't believe how happy she is that Myrna is coming to the wedding. Maybe it isn't too late and she and Myrna can still be friends. She wonders if she should ask Myrna to be a bridesmaid, but decides that's going too far. Anyway, she doesn't want a bridesmaid. Even the word.

In the days before the wedding, Frances packs up the things that she wants to take with her to Joe's. There isn't much. Her new green suitcase and a few boxes filled with her clothes. A few books, some family pictures. Some things from England that belonged to her grandmother on Basie's side: a set of silver-plated coffee spoons, a tablecloth with embroidery at each of the corners—things that had been oddities when her mother gave them to her years ago, and still are. She decides not to take any childhood treasures with her. Her dolls and stuffed animals stay in the closet in her room. She considers taking the guitar, but she hasn't learned to play it and besides, it's a teenager's toy. Technically she still is a teenager, but she's in a different category now: about to be married.

Her mother presents her with what she calls a “trousseau present.” When Frances opens the box, she finds a pretty satin nightgown with lace trim and a matching satin housecoat lined with soft flannel. She thanks her mother, but really, she can't imagine herself wearing such a thing. She doesn't know what could have possessed her mother to buy it. She thinks,
It's not as though I've ever wanted to be a princess bride.

She puts the nightgown and housecoat in her suitcase and closes it.

E
VERYONE TALKS ABOUT
how lucky Frances is that it's such a nice day for her wedding. It's November, they say. Anything could have happened. One of the neighbour women has already dropped off a plate of lemon squares, and Martha Fletcher is in the living room, having been delivered by Joe before he went home to change. Alice thought Martha might be an extra set of hands to help with the preparations, but instead she's plopped herself in Basie's armchair—her face as dark with disapproval as the witch's dress she has on—and she's now reading Bible passages aloud to herself. “Like a person who needs to be locked up,” says Alice when she and Frances are alone in the kitchen. At least no one will have to make conversation with her, Frances thinks, as long as she's droning Bible verses in Basie's chair. Her mother says, “Thank God
you're
marrying him and not me. I'd kill that woman if I had to have anything to do with her after today.” It's the closest thing to acceptance of the marriage that her mother has said out loud. Frances tells her she's not planning to have anything to do with Martha Fletcher, and her mother says she might not have a choice in the matter; she'll likely have to nurse Martha into purgatory, or wherever holy rollers go to suffer their way into heaven. Frances says that being nursed by her would likely be suffering enough, and her mother actually laughs.

The other guests begin to arrive, and Frances goes to her room so she can make a proper entrance once everyone is in the house. Joe returns for the ceremony driving a new truck—two-tone, copper and white. He's wearing a suit, the first suit he's ever owned in his life. When he arrives in the truck, still sporting its factory shine, the first thing the guests do—including the long-haired minister—is put their jackets
on and go outside to admire it. Frances is already dressed in her wedding outfit and is in her bedroom, but she watches through the open window, tucked behind the curtain. Her dad shakes Joe's hand for no reason at all, as though having a new truck is as good as winning the Irish Sweepstakes.

Is it goodwill, Frances wonders, or something else?

Then her mother comes into the bedroom and pulls her away from the window because the guests and Joe are walking back toward the house—“It's bad luck if he sees you”—and she does a last-minute touch-up of Frances's hair.

Her mother says, “You're not exactly marrying a rich man. I just hope he's paid cash for that truck and hasn't borrowed money he can't pay back.”

“I don't know what he's going to have to do to prove himself to you,” Frances says. “Build a mansion with a swimming pool, I guess.”

“Time will tell, won't it?” her mother says.

Then she gives Frances a quick hug—a gesture as unnatural as the congeniality in the yard. It's as though everyone is trying to stay in good spirits for her sake, making the best of it. Frances, the condemned.

Alice says, “Trust you to buy a blue dress for a wedding. Well, as I always said, blue looks good with your hair.”

Then Frances's father knocks on the bedroom door, and the three of them walk together into the living room, where the guests are waiting. Basie immediately trips on a chair leg because the furniture is all out of place, even though Alice had walked him through the new configuration. Frances is able to keep him from pitching into Martha Fletcher's lap, and her father rights himself and safely delivers Frances to where Joe stands with the minister.

The ceremony is brief. Frances hardly hears what the minister says, but there's something about her promising to love and him promising to honour. All just a formality as far as Frances is concerned, but this is the way it's done—a few “I dos” and they're married and signing their names in the registry book. When the minister says, “You may kiss the bride,” Joe does kiss her, but it's a peck kind of kiss, not the other kind.

Afterward, Myrna—wearing the tie-dyed dress that didn't become curtains after all—tells her she loves the blue velvet. Nothing about how strange it is that she married Joe Fletcher, nothing about the age difference, just ordinary talk about dresses on her wedding day. “Too bad you're an old married woman now,” Myrna says. “We could have had some fun together.” (
Married
! It's true.) Frances says, “We still could. I'm not moving away to Timbuktu or anything.”

“You kind of are,” Myrna says, “out there in the bush.”

One of the neighbours pops into the conversation. “You'll get some use out of that outfit,” she says. “Not like a wedding dress, which just hangs in your closet until you get sick of looking at it.” Then she asks, “Why did you decide against a formal wedding dress?” And Frances says, “I didn't. This
is
a wedding dress. It's just blue.”

After the neighbour is out of earshot, Myrna says, “She thinks you're knocked up. You aren't, are you?”

“Of course not,” Frances says. “I'm on the pill.”

Myrna says, “She probably thinks I'm knocked up too, just because I usually am.”

For a brief moment, having Myrna for a friend trumps being married. They're still laughing when Alice interrupts them to make Frances and Joe stand for pictures, which
she snaps on a new Instamatic camera with a built-in flash, and then she serves a buffet lunch. After that, Frances and Joe cut the cake, which Alice made herself and placed in the middle of a card table that she's set up especially for it. It's a plain square layer cake, but she's decorated the edges with scallops of blue icing to match Frances's dress, and it's topped with the bride-and-groom ornament they'd bought in Yellowhead. Besides the cake, the table holds a floral arrangement and two blue candles in glass holders, even though Frances had argued against decorations—“It's not a school dance, Mother.”

As they stand over the cake for pictures once again, this time holding the cake knife, Joe whispers to Frances, “You're mine now,” and it's so unexpected and she thinks,
No, I'm not
, and out loud she says, “What in the world gave you that idea?” making a joke, but she doesn't like the way he'd whispered, as though the conspiracy of marriage includes ownership.

She shouldn't take any of this seriously, she thinks. They're all play-acting, she and Joe, her parents and guests. That's what a wedding is. Martha is the only one there who is behaving exactly as she does every day of her life.

When Myrna says she has to go, Frances wants to say,
Don't leave me with all these adults
, but of course she doesn't. She tries to get Myrna to stay until the gifts are opened, but Myrna says she has to get home to Morgan, and at first Frances doesn't know who Morgan is and then she remembers that's the baby's name. She realizes she's forgotten all about Myrna's baby.

Once Myrna is gone, Frances grows impatient for the whole thing to be over. What she wants now is for everyone
to leave so she can move her things to Joe's house and unpack them, put her clothes in the drawers and her toothbrush in the little washroom, anticipate the moment when the sun goes down—or maybe they won't wait for that. She isn't sure how it will happen, but she knows it will, and she says to herself,
It's what I want.
She hurries things along by suggesting to her mother that now is a good time to open the gifts.