The Wedding Gift (3 page)

I was crowned ‘Tiny Miss
Dalton’ when I was three, and then ‘American Miss Beautiful’ in
Dallas, beating out three hundred other girls when I was seven. I
became ‘Little Darling Dolly’ in Abilene at nine, and so it goes
right up till my last win as ‘Corn Princess’ last year. I thought I
might go on to try for the ‘Miss Oklahoma’ crown, but of course now
I am retired, so to speak, as I will be Mrs. George Willets the IV.
I will be a pillar of the community and not ‘Miss Oklahoma’, or
even ‘Miss America’, not that I mind, 'cause I am real happy about
the way things turned out.

Still and all, I don’t
think anyone around here will ever just think of me as George’s
wife, as I am somewhat famous in my own right, as you can see.
Also, people have always just liked to look at me and I don’t
imagine that will change any time soon unless something horrible
happens and I get real fat on account of being pregnant, as I now
am.

I stand at five feet five
and my daddy never let anyone cut my hair even an inch, so it goes
down to my bottom and it’s almost silver it's so blond. I have the
biggest blue eyes and a tiny little nose. When I smile, Daddy says
you could put quarters in my dimples. All this is what old George
IV is gonna be getting when I become his bride, and me, well what
am I getting? I’m getting George. George is “
a fine figure of a man
" - that’s what
his mama says, and mine does too, though that could be because he’s
the father of her next grandchild.

I don’t know if anyone
except his mama would be saying what a fine figure George cut if he
weren’t the heir to Willets Petroleum, but he is … the heir, I
mean. And there ain’t no one in town, me included, who can separate
the actual man from all those millions of dollars because if he
weren’t, well, like our very own Prince William, then people might
be more inclined to notice other stuff … like that George is only
half an inch taller than me and already going to fat. He has him a
real round face and it gets red awful easy too. He has his mama’s
pretty brown eyes; unfortunately they sit above his daddy’s potato
nose and there is a fairly dire receding chin situation going on
that makes me hope he’ll grow himself a beard after we’re
married.

So the way George looks and
all, that’s just another reason I hope this baby is a boy, because
then, even if he is a dead ringer for his daddy, everyone will say
that he is a fine figure of a man one day, too. But shoot, if the
baby’s a girl - an ugly fat girl - well then, and you know it’s
true, that even with the Willets' millions, that’s all she will
ever be. I will illustrate the sad story of Audrey Stepps to prove
my point. That poor girl …Jesus love her, she got hit hard with the
ugly stick and all her daddy’s money, which isn’t as much as the
Willets have, but it’s a lot, won't buy her a husband unless she
can find one who is as blind as a bat, and everyone knows
it.

Of course I realize that it
is possible that my looks will outweigh George's lack of them, but
history doesn’t seem to offer me much hope in that direction. After
all, Miz Bethany, to give the devil her due, was once ‘Miss
Missouri’, and she is still awful pretty, unless you are comparing
her to me - ha ha. I’m just pulling your leg. Anyway, look at how
her son turned out - so yes, I do hope I just have boys.

Chapter 3

I am just a teeny bit
pregnant … well, all right … ten weeks if I am paying strict
attention to the truth, and our wedding is in a month. So then I
will be fourteen weeks along, which sounds awfully pregnant and I
am beginning to worry about my dress fitting. Oh, that dress! It is
the most fabulous dress in the world. It's by Vera Wang, and it’s a
strapless lace dress with a teeny tiny waist and a big skirt. Every
inch of it is covered in this fantastic Belgian lace and, to make
it totally stunning, there is a little teeny dusty green satin sash
which ties around the waist and trails to the floor.

My perfect dress was nearly
fourteen thousand dollars! Of course Mama wanted to make my wedding
dress, and I wouldn’t have hurt her feelings for the world, but
after I saw this dress, the dress in a Vogue magazine, I knew I had
to have it and no other!

The really smart thing is
how I paid for it. See, a few months ago when George made his
courting intentions serious, he gave me an American Express black
card. Those are the kind that only really rich people have; them
and movie stars. I mean hardly anyone alive has one, but I do, or
if I am paying strict attention to the truth, the Willets family
has them, and George put me on his account. So now I am just like
Jessica Simpson, who by the way, people say I look just like,
except her eyes are brown … mine are blue, and she is a lot older
than me of course.

Dang it, this is so darn
funny. Here I look and see that I have been writing and writing.
I’ve done more writing in this here book now that I look at it,
than I did during all four years of high school.

Chapter 4

Of course I was way too
busy in school for any silly writing; I had cheerleading, of which
for the last two years I was captain of the squad, and then I had
student council, and homecoming court to attend to. Then there was
my acting. I was Laurie in 'Oklahoma' in the Lion’s Club production
for four years straight. And then I was Guinevere in 'Camelot', and
Maria in 'West Side Story'. That last one was real funny because,
see, Maria is supposed to be of Hispanic origin, which I, of
course, am not, and when Daddy heard I got the part, he became all
heated up, and said his little girl was not going to be a
“
damn wetback
”. My
daddy is not a racist man but he’s just not a real educated one
either.

And I said to him,
“
Daddy, it’s art and to please not to call
Latino Americans wetbacks neither
”, but he
would not be moved from his position about that play. So we went to
see Mr. Avery, who was my English teacher and the drama coach all
rolled into one. Mr. Avery listened to my daddy’s reasoning and, I
must say, he looked like he had swallowed a lemon 'cause he was
trying so hard not to laugh.

But then what did he go and
do?

Well I’ll tell you what he
did. He changed the entire story, so that I could still be Maria,
and do it with my own blond hair; the two gangs were changed from
Hispanic and white gangs to two white gangs, all just so I could be
the leading lady which, to be strictly honest, was not as much of a
surprise to me as it might have been to others. Mr. Avery is really
old, but he sure did like to stare at me just the same. The play
was real stupid, of course, on account of the changes and Jessie
said they should have renamed it 'A Redneck’s Story', or maybe
'White and Whiter in Oklahoma', which, to be strictly honest, I
might have to say I agree with her about.

So then I also had my
responsibilities in Christian Youth, and what with being ‘Corn
Princess’, you can see that there were just not enough hours in the
day for writing or math or whatever.

Jessie, heck she was about
a billion times worse than me; she had no extracurricular
activities except for cheering, and still I don’t think that girl
can spell a thing but her own name. Now my point about all that was
the writing; I see that I have just gone on and on, and not said a
word about my darling George, except as to how I have gone and
saved him from a life of being called Junior. That is real funny,
not saying much about him and all, because George is the man I am
going to marry, and whose baby I am carrying. Why anyone reading
this would think that I hardly love George at all … which is so
wrong, because, of course, I love George more than anything, though
if I am paying strict attention to the truth, my being all madly in
love with him, as I certainly am, was not always the
case.

I had always known who
George was, of course. Anyone that wasn’t born under a rock, at
least here in Dalton, knew who he was, who his family was. The
Willets pretty much own the whole dang town. They have Willets
Petroleum, of course, and that is housed in the only five stories
building downtown. Shoot they even have another office in Dallas
which, by the way, is my favorite city on earth. But beyond the
building, there is … let’s see, the George Willets Memorial Golf
Course, which adjoins the George Willets Memorial Rest
Gardens.

Daddy says that they is
arranged that way so’s the Willets’ men can keel over on the golf
course and be buried two yards away in sight of the greens, and
also so “
that those cheap bastards only
have to employ one poor groundskeeper for
everything
.”

I don’t know anything about
that as I have never played a bit of golf in my life, though now,
of course, I will have to take lessons after the baby comes because
Miz Bethany says “
All the Willets women
play golf; it's expected of us
,” which just
makes me laugh out loud. What the hell is she talking about, 'all
the Willets women’? At my last count she was the only Willets
woman. But gee, what do I know? Maybe she meant poor Robina once
played golf, and maybe that’s what set her off to slaughtering
everybody in sight too.

At any rate, I think I will
find excuses to avoid learning golf as long as it’s humanly
possible, though I do kind of like the idea of being at the country
club all dressed up from Neiman Marcus and inviting Jesse and the
girls there as my guests whenever I feel like it. Oh my, Jessie
will liven up that bunch! Wait till they get an eyeful of her.
Actually since Jessie is so pretty, I am hoping that she will find
her own rich husband there, and then later we can build houses
right next door to each other out by the new lake, though not right
next door to the Bethany House, for heaven’s sakes.

So, as I was saying, the
Willets family either owns everything in town worth owning or has
their name on the building memorializing the first George Willets.
And that is how the present George and me came to be a couple. See,
it was last football season, and the scoreboard at the field was
just getting more broke down and sadder looking by the day. Why,
right before Homecoming, the old rusted struts holding it up just
gave out and our team, the Dalton Bulldogs, was humiliated by the
visiting team, the Rush Wolves. They were laughing at it and saying
as how we had it jerry-rigged to only show home team scores. They
laughed even harder at crazy old Walt, the janitor, who stood up
there on a ladder turning over the numbers manually.

We got our butts kicked
that night, and I think the condition of the scoreboard was the
reason why. Now you got to understand that scoreboards for football
stadiums are not cheap. A real nice one like the kind we wanted was
nearly thirty thousand dollars and the only people in Dalton with
that kind of money are the Willets, the Steppes, the Lanes, and a
handful of others whose names do not come to mind at the
moment.

The Steppes and the Lanes
would never have donated the scoreboard, as their own awful ugly
daughters had no school spirit whatsoever; no doubt on account of
everybody hating them and trying to pretend they did not exist. The
Willets, well they were always a possibility, and they had actually
donated the original scoreboard back ten years ago or so when
George had been attending the school.

George had not exactly cut
a wide swath through high school, even though our high school is
named - you guessed it - George Willets High. But after his mama
and daddy not only paid for a new scoreboard, but for a whole new
football field, then George was invited to play for the Bulldogs,
which he did, but mostly by being suited up and sitting on the new
benches that his parents had paid for.

As I believe I have
mentioned, George is just a hair under five foot six, so he is not
really built for the game. But despite George not getting much
(well zero) playing time, the student council figured that the
Willets might have a proprietary interest in the condition of the
football field and our pathetic scoreboard. The council hoped that
they might want to donate some more money to fix it up. I was the
secretary of the student council last year and though mostly that
meant just sitting there and giggling with the treasurer who was
Jessie; darn if the rest of them did not nominate me to go and ask
George Sr. for the money for our new scoreboard. They said this was
on account of being captain of the cheerleading squad as well as a
student council member, because I could really explain just how bad
the situation was, being on the front line, so to speak.

Well heck, I said I’d do
it. I had met Mr. Willets previously when those of us on the short
list for Corn Princess were being photographed for the weekly
paper. He was one of the judges, naturally. He said his reason for
being there that day was to make sure we looked as pretty in person
as we had the day of the judging. But Jessie, who was also a
nominee, even though we all knew, Jessie included, that she was too
mean to win, well Jessie said that he was just another dirty old
man looking for a reason to stare at young girls.

Maybe she was right, I
didn’t much care, as men of all ages had pretty much been staring
at me since I started to get my bosoms at around twelve. Anyway, I
said if I had to go to his office and ask for money, then Jessie
had to come too, for moral support. Jessie said okay, what the
hell, and after school that day we went back to my house to plan
our speech and what to wear too.