The Wedding Gift (2 page)

Well, I say good for you,
Daddy, and I wish I could do the same. Of course at the time, I
thought I liked to have died of shame. Back when it happened I was
certain that it was gonna ruin my chances to be Corn
Princess.

I got real dramatic
following Daddy’s arrest, and told Mama that I wanted to spend the
rest of high school in Norman with Uncle Jerry and Aunt Maddie. I
said I wasn’t never gonna see her or Daddy again. But Mama she just
laughed and said it would all blow over by supper time and that,
near as she could tell, people mostly thought it was
funny.

Well some people mighta
thought so, but not them tight-assed people at the Country Club,
and most certainly not God Almighty Bethany Willets who almost
fired Mama over it. But mostly Mama was right - it did blow over.
Everyone loves Daddy, and I did become Corn Princess anyway, so who
cared, right?

Of course, now I have to
relive the whole unfortunate incident on account of where my bridal
shower is going to be. Shoot, it gets even better 'cause now Miz
Willets says I can only invite Mama, Sarah Beth, my sister-in-law,
and one girlfriend to my very own bridal shower!

My monster-in-law-to-be
said it was because it was a luncheon for eight only and so I said
to her, I said, well great then, eight is me, Mama, Sarah Beth,
Jessie, Lurlene, May, and Britney, that makes up eight, right? But
Miz Bethany, she just laughed like I was joking, which I purely was
not. She said to me, her voice sweet as poison:

“
Oh Leeann, aren’t you a
card?
” whatever that means, and then she
told me that I was forgetting about Missy and Audrey who
“
of course had to be in the
wedding
,” so they had to be at the bridal
shower too, as did her best friend Donna Dee Riffler. Well I say
"
What? Huh? Let's
review
":

My bridal shower, and three
of my best friends get knocked off the invite list so that those
two humongous losers, Missy and Audrey, can come? And along with
them comes old Miz Riffler who I don’t know from Adam.

And, God help me, what did
she mean, do you think, about Missy and Audrey being in the
wedding? Being in my wedding as what - the world's biggest flower
girls? Or maybe not, since my baby niece Tallulah is most
definitely going to be the flower girl - the only flower girl! I
wonder if Miz Willets is planning on putting those two mutants into
tuxedos and making them walk down the aisle with Junior as his
attendants. Oh darn me for the fool I am; there I went again
calling George 'Junior'.

George is the name of the
man I am marrying in one month - no more calling him by that stupid
name ‘Junior’. I’ll say it again, and this time I really don’t care
what his mama says back to me, George is his name and it's what I
am calling him.

She is all,
“
Oh now, Leeann honey, George is Junior's
daddy's name and I will be so confused if there are two Georges in
the house
.” Well I didn’t say it to her
face, but you can bet I was thinking to myself all the time; I was
thinking, don’t you worry your old bleached out head about it none.
Because that is the one other thing that is strictly non-negotiable
- there will not be two Georges in her house - just the one; her
George can be in her house, and my George will be in
mine.

Well George, me, and our
little baby when it comes, will be in our house. Now my George
balked a little at first, saying, “
Sugar,
there are ten bedrooms at Bethany House, and you don’t even have to
see Mama if you don’t want to
.”
Riiiggghhhtt George - God help me, but can’t men be fools? I didn’t
say that of course; I just used my feminine powers of persuasion
and he came around right quick.

Me and my George are buying
one of those darling townhouses right over by the new mall that’s
opening this spring. And I will have lavender wall-to-wall
carpeting in every room if I want it, which by the way I do. Well,
maybe not the baby’s room. I won’t do a thing in there till I find
out if it’s a boy or a girl, though I know it’s a boy, and I know
something else to; we, that is me and George, are going to name him
Charlie … Charlie Willets, after my daddy and after my brother who
died when I was a baby. Ma Willets will poop a brick, but it’s my
baby, and I am not naming him George, which is an ugly name, if you
want to be strictly honest, and most of all I am not naming him
Roger, which is the other name Miz High and Mighty Willets
suggested, if you can believe your ears. Roger is the name of
George's dead uncle who was killed in the biggest, nastiest scandal
to ever hit our little town.

Everybody still talks about
it. Roger’s wife was some crazy girl from California or somewhere.
I ain’t calling her crazy or nothin’ just 'cause she weren’t from
here. I mean she must have been as crazy as a bit snake to do what
she did. She up and cut poor old Roger’s head clean off and then,
Jesus save her, she killed all their kids before finally doing
herself in. Well, I like that! That’s a real fine legacy to give a
baby, isn’t it? Anyhow, to make matters worse, George, and even my
own mama said that they thought naming the baby Roger, if it’s a
boy, was a real fine idea. They told me it was a fitting way to
remember Uncle Roger. Well hells bells, I say, who wants to
remember stuff like that?

If it is a boy, and I know
it is, then naming him Charlie is also a way of remembering, but
remembering people in my family, who may not be all rich and smart
like the Willets is, but we don’t got no nasty-ass old psycho
killers in our family tree neither; you name babies to remember
good people, that’s what I say … people like my poor dead brother,
to name one, who was a fine boy that was not killed in some icky
way, but fell out of a tree on a Halloween dare before I was even a
year old. Besides, Charlie is my daddy’s name too, so that’s it as
far as I am concerned. You know, I’ve been thinking if we have us
another son down the road, I think I will call him Worthier;
Worthier Willets has a nice ring to it.

See the thing is, old lady
Willets will pretty much poop herself a brick no matter what I do
for the rest of my natural life as far as I can see, so I might as
well just go ahead and do what I want anyway. George, he will go
along with stuff I want, 'cause he is as crazy about me as her old
George is about her. With poor Mr. Willets Sr., it's all
“
Yes, Sugar, and whatever you want,
Bethany
” all the time at their house. So I
figure things will run real smooth if that’s how it’s going to be
in my house with me and my George.

I think in a few years,
when we have more than one little baby of our own, then George can
build me a huge old mansion and we’ll call it Leeann House. That
naming houses after themselves is a Willets' tradition, one I may
just take up myself seeing as how I am going to be a Willets
soon.

See, here is how that
naming houses got started: Back almost a hundred years ago, the
first George Willets - who everyone in Dalton calls George the
First, built Willets House, which is a humongous, real life
Southern plantation house. It looks like Tara in ‘Gone with the
Wind’, only a lot bigger. Mr. Willets the First then passed it onto
his son Roger and his new wife, who got it for a wedding gift. And
then they lived in it, until their son Roger got married. That
Roger, who I named in my mind “Roger the Last”, which I know is
real disrespectful and whatnot, but it’s also true. Well then,
Roger the Last and his wife Robina took it over upon their marriage
and after the murders that was it for Willets' occupancy, so to
speak.

Of course, the current
George, who is known as Big George Willets, well he refused to sell
the ancestral home, or better yet burn it to the ground, and since
the current Mrs. Bethany Willets refused to live there, he built
her a big house on the golf course, and named it Bethany
House.

Now the original Willets
palace just sits there year after year, all empty and taking up a
whole city block for nothing. The family keeps it up, of course, so
it’s still beautiful and grand, but for all its being so fancy and
perfect looking, it ain’t stopped it from being our local haunted
house for as long as I can remember.

For a long time after the
murders, I guess that local kids used to sneak in there on
Halloween and bring stuff out, and tell stories about what they’d
seen in there. But the last time someone broke in there - at least
as far as anyone knows - was when my brother and his buddy, Donny,
went inside the house seventeen years ago.

Charlie was killed and
Donny was hurt real bad and even when he got better, he would never
tell anyone why he and Charlie were up in the tree together. People
talk, like always, and stories grew up around the house even more
after my brother was killed.

These days, it’s still the
place that kids cross the street to avoid walking too close to. So
it just sits there big and white and beautiful behind these fancy
wrought iron gates with all those huge oak trees growing up the
sides of the driveway. Mama says that it looks like a movie set,
and she always expects to see ladies in hoop skirts on the lawn,
but to my mind …well, I don’t like to look at it at all. I kind of
always expect to see something too, but it's not ladies in hoop
skirts.

There is a room on the
second floor of that house, and when you walk by you get this
feeling like you want to look up at the window, but I never do … I
can't even say why. But I’ll tell you this, it's not my brother's
face I think I’ll see if I do ever get brave enough to look up. I
think it’s her face, Robina. Jessie said she saw her up there once,
and now I wouldn’t look up for all the tea in China.

Chapter 2

Darn it, I have gotten all
off track here. What I meant to be writing about is my story, not
about some creepy old murders and a haunted house.

My Grandma Belle gave me
this journal when I told her about me and George falling in love
and planning to get married and all, and she said I should
“
Write down my story for future
generations of Worthier-Willets to read
.” I
thought that sounded fine and, besides which, if I write down my
story, the real story, then no one will have to rely on Miz
Willets’ version, which might not be so nice, if you know what I am
saying. So this is the true story of me and George, and the babies
we are going to fill up our townhouse with.

My name is Leeann Corrine
Worthier. I was born right here in Dalton, Oklahoma to Charlie and
Elma Worthier. My mama and daddy sure weren’t expecting me; they
had their two boys, Charlie and Randy, who were already thirteen
and twelve. Mama always said she had been done with babies for
years, and since her boys were mostly grown, Mama had even started
working for Miz Willets two days a week as a part-time maid to
bring in more money. Mama said she started feeling peculiar and
believed that the change had come upon her early, but it hadn’t …
it was just me.

Now I don’t know if they
were happy right off the bat about a surprise baby, but I know that
my daddy has been crazy about me as long as I can remember. Anyway,
my mama always said that if it weren’t for me, she would have gone
crazy after Charlie died. She said me being born gave her a new
reason to live and that she has thanked the Lord above for me every
day since I got here, which to be strictly honest, I never get
tired of hearing.

I know my brother Randy
loves me, too, but he isn’t so good at showing it … not to me or to
his wife, Sarah Beth, either. Mama says Randy used to be the
sweetest, most affectionate little boy in the world, but that he
got real withdrawn and quiet after he lost his big brother and he
ain’t never been the same since.

I don’t know about any of
that; it's hard for me to imagine people being any different than
how I have always known them to be. Anyway, after Charlie died, my
Grandma Belle was so worried about Mama’s fragile mental condition,
that she is the one who got her started entering me in beauty
pageants as a way to interest her in new things. Since my mama is a
genius at making fancy clothes, she sewed all my dresses for the
pageants and then, after a little while, the other mamas started
asking her to make their daughters some dresses too. So before you
knew it, Mama had a little business going - 'Elma's Pageant Dresses
and Gowns' - and heck, now she has a web site.

All the pageant stuff was
real good for a couple reasons: first off Mama got happy and
involved in the world around her again, and also Elma’s Pageant
Dresses and Gowns has mostly supported our family since daddy has
only worked a little off and on since losing Charlie. But the point
about all that is that, as you can see, my coming saved the family
in many ways, and they have always treated me like a princess on
account of that; well saving the family, and then …well, don’t
think I’m being just terrible for saying this, but it’s also on
account of how I look. If my mama ever read this, she would say God
would strike me down for my pride, but if I want to be strictly
honest here, then I have to talk about the way I look. And anyways,
it’s on account of my looks, which to be strictly honest ain’t none
of my doing, so I don’t know why it’s sinful to be proud of them,
and, for certain, the way I look is why George wants to marry me. I
am “
the prettiest girl that was ever born
in Dalton City, Oklahoma
.” See, that’s not
being prideful an' ugly; that’s just repeating what everyone says.
And I do mean everyone.