Miss Julia Renews Her Vows (2 page)

Lloyd was the happiest of the entire wedding party, and I’m including the bride and groom. In fact, he could hardly sit still, for he was at last getting the daddy he’d never had and he loved Mr. Pickens to death. And to give the devil his due, Mr. Pickens felt pretty much the same way about him. Which was all the more reason to make sure that Mr. Pickens toed the line and kept his shoes under the right bed.

Lillian was with us, too. She’d been at the house the day before, even though it was a Sunday, when Mr. Pickens came waltzing in with the announcement to all and sundry that he was marrying Hazel Marie the following morning. With a whoop of joy, she’d immediately started preparing dishes for the wedding luncheon.

Lillian was another one who’d fallen under his spell, so he could do no wrong in her eyes. She gave him a lot more credit for good intentions than I did.

She’d shown up on that Monday morning dressed in her Sunday churchgoing clothes: a solid white nylon dress with a red patent leather purse the size of a weekend suitcase and red patent leather heels that she could hardly walk in. And on her head, she wore a wide-brimmed red hat with silk anemones and a veil on it.

That meant that Lillian was the only one of us wearing white, a fact that kept Hazel Marie in tears of recrimination at her own precipitous fall from grace, so obviously apparent from the size of her midsection.

It got worse when Lillian happened to mention that Latisha, her great-granddaughter, had wanted to go to the wedding, but Lillian had left her with the neighbor lady. Hazel Marie really started crying then, because she couldn’t stand leaving Latisha out.

“Just hold on,” Mr. Pickens said, showing remarkable self-control under the circumstances. “I’ll go get her.”

“Well, you do that,” Lillian said, “an’ I got to set here an’ braid her hair for a hour or two, ’cause she can’t go lookin’ like she do now.”

I had to step in then because any further delay in the wedding plans would make a nervous wreck out of me. “Go by and get her afterward, Mr. Pickens. She can come to the wedding luncheon. And Lillian, be sure to give her a handful of rice to throw.”

“Yes’m, that do the trick an’ she won’t know the diff’rence.”

So we got them married and those two rapidly growing infants legitimate. And when all is said and done, that was more important than a properly formal and traditional ceremony, although I was heartsick at the secrecy and the haste with which it had to be done.

I was heartsick over more than that, though, for now came the need for explanations and cover-ups and outright lies that in the long run no one would believe. In truth, however, I didn’t care whether anyone believed them or not, just so they acted as if they did.

Part of the problem was that this time I had no leverage by which to elevate Hazel Marie to a respectable position in the town. The first time, that time when she showed up at my front door with my recently deceased husband’s little son in tow, I had steeled myself to stare down the gossip and rumors, the whispers and the titters at how my pillar- of-the-church husband had betrayed me. I did it by accepting Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd myself, and, furthermore, by compelling the town to accept them, too. I was able to do it, too, because half the town owed money to Wesley Lloyd Springer’s estate and I announced that I was calling in the notes because I was sick and tired of my houseguest being snubbed. There must have been a number of heart-to-heart talks between husbands and wives all over town after that, for all of a sudden, Hazel Marie was invited to everything anybody was giving and to some things they’d just decided to give. The women, who are undoubtedly the worst when it comes to excluding people and standing on principles they don’t require of themselves, quickly decided that Hazel Marie was a lovely, if slightly countrified, young woman, and that with a little Christian charity on their part, she would fit right in. Their husbands breathed sighs of relief as I extended their loans at lower rates than Wesley Lloyd had been gouging them with.

But this time, in spite of the fact that Hazel Marie was respectably married for the first time in her fortysomething years, there was nothing I could do to prevent people from ostracizing her after they counted on their fingers the length of time between wedding and birth dates.

On the drive back from the magistrate’s office, Lloyd rode with his mother and new daddy. They would go by and pick up Latisha while Sam, Lillian and I went on home to prepare the bridal luncheon.

With Lloyd out of our car, I was free to discuss the next problem facing us, so I did. “Sam,” I said, “how are we going to explain this?”

“Explain what?” he asked as he merged onto the interstate.

“Why, this hurry-up marriage without benefit of clergy and wedding invitations and parties and all the usual and expected festivities of a proper wedding. And explain, also, the fact that those babies are going to be born long before the normal nine-month span is up.”

Sam, with his eyes on the road, smiled. “There’ve been a number of hefty premature babies born around town, Julia, so ours won’t be the first.”

“That excuse won’t work in this case, because near as I can figure, Hazel Marie is already about four months along, and no way in the world will anybody believe five-month-premature babies can weigh six pounds each.”

“I think of that, too,” Lillian chimed in from the backseat. “An’ ’sides that, twinses is known for comin’ early, so that don’t give us much time to play around in.”

“Oh my goodness, Lillian, I hadn’t even thought of that. You’re both going to have to help me figure out what to do. I mean, what to say, because you know the first thing people’re going to ask is when did they get married. Especially when Hazel Marie announces her marriage wearing a maternity dress.”

Sam glanced at me. “
We
should announce it, Julia. In fact, I think we should have a party—a big one at the country club, maybe, invite everybody and announce it there. And,” he went on with a grin, “dare anybody to say a word.”

“They wouldn’t say anything, anyway,” I said with a sigh of despair. “They’ll be as nice as can be to my face and to hers, but then they’ll snub her as if she has leprosy. Strike her right off their dance cards. Their invitation lists, too.”

Sam reached over to stroke my hand. “I think you’re worrying too much about it. Hazel Marie’s going to be so busy, she won’t notice what anybody else is doing. Or not doing.”

“She sho’ will be, Miss Julia,” Lillian said, straining against her seat belt to lean up closer to the front seat. “She gonna be so full of bein’ married to Mr. Pickens, she won’t even want to go to no parties, an’ she not even see them give her the evil eye when she go to church. She gonna be so happy, she won’t care nobody else happy for her. And ’member this, twinses take up lots of time an’ she be too busy to worry ’bout what yo’ lady friends sayin’.”

“Well, that’s another thing,” I said, recalling Hazel Marie’s announcement of her intentions the day before. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but she told me yesterday that she intended this marriage to be in name only. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Sam’s eyebrows went up and Lillian put her head back on the seat and murmured, “They Lord, what she gonna think of next?”

Then Sam laughed. “You believe that, Julia?”

“I don’t know if I do or not. She seemed pretty determined at the time. But then she acted real thrilled when Mr. Pickens showed up, so who knows what she’ll do. But she said she wasn’t going to put up with somebody who was just putting up with her because he was forced into marrying her. And I can’t say I blame her, except I don’t know if I can handle a quickie divorce. I’m not doing all that well with a quickie wedding.”

Sam was a steady and trustworthy driver, so I didn’t have to watch everything he was doing. I could put my head back and listen to the hum of the tires on the pavement. But that respite didn’t last long, for I thought of something else to worry about.

I sat up straight. “Sam, where’re they going to live? I couldn’t stand it if they moved to Mr. Pickens’s house in Asheville.”

“I’ve already talked to him. They’ll live in my house, at least till the babies come and Hazel Marie’s back on her feet.” Sam was referring to the lovely old house where he’d lived for many years before we married. He still kept the house up, using it as an office for his retirement activities. And also using it as an excuse, in my opinion, to keep James employed. Sam had an unusually soft heart.

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, “but I’m a little surprised that Mr. Pickens agreed to it. He’s so independent, you know, and stubborn about some things, like accepting help from anybody.”

“He’s worried about Hazel Marie,” Sam said, as he pulled out to pass a car. “I think he wants to keep her close to you.” As I mentally preened at being needed and appreciated, Sam went on. “And to Dr. Hargrove.”

“Miss Julia?” Lillian strained against her seat belt. “I don’t know as she oughta be that far away. Mr. Sam’s house almost four blocks from us, an’ if she get in a bad way when Mr. Pickens at work and Lloyd in school, what she gonna do?”

“Oh my,” I said, thinking of the bad scare we’d already had with Hazel Marie. “She really needs somebody with her all the time. Lillian, do you know anybody who’d like a steady job with good pay and benefits?”

“No’m, not right off. Most peoples I know like to work at McDonald’s or out to that big plant what’s hirin’ ’bout everybody that come in. You can’t hardly find no baby nurses no more.”

“Well, what do new mothers do?”

“Law, I don’t know, Miss Julia. Them doctors send ’em home the next day an’ tell ’em to get lots of rest an’ don’t do too much. Make you wonder what them doctors thinkin’, don’t it?”

“I should say it does. Well, Lillian, I guess it’ll be up to you and me. We’re the only family she has, so we can tend to her and those babies during the day and Mr. Pickens will have to take up the slack at night.”

There was dead silence in the car for a long minute as we all thought of Mr. Pickens dragging out of bed in the middle of the night—not once but several times—to change diapers and feed one or both of those babies. I could just picture him stumbling around, half asleep, heating a bottle and rocking a nursing baby. And just as he got that one down and crawled back in bed, the other one would flare up.

Sam started laughing and Lillian and I joined in, all of us enjoying the same thought: Mr. Pickens’s rambling days were over.

“Well,” I said, wiping my eyes, “I don’t know that we ought to leave it all up to him, especially right after they come home from the hospital. Think about this, Sam. What if we encourage them to stay with us for a while longer. Hazel Marie’s already in our downstairs bedroom, which would give them plenty of privacy, and also keep her from going up and down the stairs as Dr. Hargrove told her not to do. You and I could continue on in her room upstairs and, in the meantime, furnish the sunroom, where Coleman used to stay, as a nursery. Then when the babies are born, we could exchange rooms with them. That way, their whole little family would be on one floor together because Lloyd would be right across the hall, and you and I would be available to relieve them.”

“Relieve them?” Sam asked. “You mean, get up at night and feed them? I’m not sure I know how.”

“Why, there’s nothing to it,” I said, convinced that we’d have no trouble, even though I’d never done it myself. “Lillian can show us and we’d take turns. But let’s not worry about that now, because Hazel Marie may not be out of the woods yet. Dr. Hargrove told me that this is a high-risk pregnancy and she needs somebody with her all the time in case of an emergency. She simply cannot live anywhere by herself.”

Struck with sudden inspiration, I grabbed Sam’s arm. “Sam! Etta Mae Wiggins is who we need. She’d be perfect. Hazel Marie’s known her for years, and she’s a nurse. Well,” I went on, somewhat chastened by a second thought, “not exactly, but more of a nurse than any of us.”