The Wedding Machine (12 page)

Hilda guesses that describes her marriage in a nutshell—Angus gushing with emotion and her striking a stiff posture behind a veil. As she stares back at the reflection of her daughter standing behind her, she thinks of the time Angus saw an adolescent alligator skulking through their backyard and he called Cousin Willy. Those two went outside and wrestled it down and hung it on the tree until Marvin's Meats came by to pick it up for processing. It was one of the biggest fights she'd ever had with him, needling him about why they had to hang the creature in their yard instead of Ray and Willy's.

“For one thing, it came onto our property, Hilda,” he said. “And for another, we only have
one
child to keep away from it, and they have
three
.” Laura had run away for the first time by then, and Ray was looking after Justin too.

Thing is, Angus wanted more children, and he couldn't understand why Hilda didn't. It was the first real wedge between them.

“I want a family,” he said many a night, cuddling up to her, stroking the back of her head. “I want brothers and sisters for Little Hilda. I want to fill up every bedroom in this big old house, and I want to wake up to the sound of several pairs of bare feet on the staircase. Don't you?”

It was all too easy to roll away from him and curl up into herself beneath the sheets like she did when she was a child. He would fall back on his pillow and sigh, but the next day he would greet her sweetly with a kiss in the kitchen and a pat on her satin shrouded elbow, and they would sit at the breakfast table admiring their daughter as his spoon knocked around the edges of the coffee mug so that the sugar dissolved in the blackness.

Looking back, Hilda sees that she was pretty good at giving him the cold shoulder. At shutting down whenever he reached out with the slightest suggestion of physical affection. Not to mention his plea for them to “go see someone.”
I mean, really. How horrifying would
that be?

The truth is that she never would have had Hilda in the first place if he hadn't caught her in a weak moment with one too many glasses of champagne one New Year's Eve.

She was more than terrified of being a parent. Her mother had done a horrendous job, and she had no model to follow and no desire to bring an innocent life into this world where the nights are long and painful.

Sure, she wanted to relax like the rest of their pack and just get on with life, like Kitty B. and Ray, their own bellies swelling with watermelons alongside hers that year. But relaxing never seemed to happen for Hilda. She had the dearest, easiest husband imaginable, but she never could let go and enjoy him—not during sex, not during talks late at night on the back piazza, not during walks along the seawall—she just
couldn't.

Of course, she's glad she had Little Hilda. She loves her more than anything, and she's sorry that she's caused her distress over these last few years. She knows Little Hilda worries about her. Ray and Kitty B. and Sis tell her that Little Hilda calls one of them each week to check on her. When Angus left, Little Hilda wrote her several times, telling her that she loved her and that she wished Hilda would come stay with her a while in Washington, but Hilda couldn't do that either. She couldn't walk out of her house, not even into her yard, so how could she get on an airplane and fly through the air to an unfamiliar city?

Hilda squeezes her daughter tight. “Give me ten minutes and I'll be ready.”

“Ten minutes, okay? I don't want you to go alone, and we really shouldn't keep Father Campbell and the wedding party waiting.”

Hilda makes up her face quickly and puts on this ivory silk suit she'd bought over the phone from Neiman Marcus. Thank goodness for the sizeable inheritance her father left her.

The jacket is perfectly tailored with three-quarter sleeves and a thin, flat bow belt, and the skirt is straight with the most delicate flounced hem encircling her knees. She puts on her twisted strands of small seeded pearls as a perfect final touch and slips on the open-toe bronze heels that she and Sis picked out at Bob Ellis Shoes last weekend.

As Hilda walks down her elegantly curved staircase, her daughter and her future husband smile up at her.

“You did it!” Little Hilda says, and she claps her hands lightly together.

“Wow, Mrs. Prescott.” Giuseppe grins, and even Hilda has to admit he's a knockout. He's got dark hair, olive skin, and bright pools of blue eyes with a dark blue ring encircling them. It's easy to see why Little Hilda crossed the hall on Capitol Hill to get a better look at him, despite his alien status as a Yankee, a first-generation immigrant, and most foreign of all, a
liberal.

Well, he's sure embraced her despite their differences, and it's charming to see him decked out in full southern summer attire: a seersucker suit and a red bow tie printed with the South Carolina state flag.

Giuseppe narrows his eyes and reaches out to embrace his future mother-in-law, and she moves with precision to return his affection so as not to upset her hair or smear her champagne-colored lipstick.

“You look beautiful,” he says while Little Hilda beams behind them, as if all is well, as if her wedding weekend will run smoothly after all.

Angus greets Hilda at the church door with a measured smile.

“You look nice,” he says, then he puts his hand out as if his ex-wife is a wedding guest and he is honored to meet her. Hilda stares at the familiar pads of his fingers for a moment, then walks past him toward the altar, where Capers and Ray gesture for the wedding party to gather around for their instructions. Sis turns and waves to Hilda from her organ perch in the balcony above the church doors, and she nods back, thankful to see a friendly face.

Hilda hasn't stepped inside this church for over four years. She stopped coming after Angus left, though she knew he switched over to Trudi's Baptist church on the outskirts of town where there is no Tiffany stained glass window and no incense and no port wine poured into silver chalices for the sacrament. Talk about uncivilized!

Angus and Hilda were married at this very altar just over twenty-eight years ago beneath the ornate brass cross and the Ten Commandments chiseled in the marble panels behind it. And Little Hilda was christened at the baptismal font on the left side of the altar along with Priscilla the winter after their birth. That was a bittersweet ceremony, since Kitty B. and LeMar had buried Baby Roberta two months earlier.

~ FEBRUARY 24, 1980 ~

Hilda peered out through the north side window during her daughter's baptism at the stone that marked Baby Roberta's grave—a small, rectangular outline with a fresh patch of grass in the center and a square frame at its head where an angel knelt above the name and the date of her very short life:
Roberta Ferguson Hathaway, October 14,
1980–December 20, 1980.

The rectangular stones reminded Hilda of an empty bassinet, and her knees buckled at the thought of it as she stood before the baptismal font the morning of Little Hilda's christening.

It was Little Hilda's shrill cry after Old Stained Glass poured the cold water across her forehead that pulled Hilda's back to the ceremony. Baby Roberta was supposed to be christened with Hilda and Ray's daughters that day. They had decided upon a triple baptism, and Hilda quietly broke down the day the invitations arrived with Baby Roberta's name etched in the center of them. She immediately called the stationery store and asked them to reprint them. Then she asked Richadene to watch over her baby while she took the old invitations out to the backyard and burned them in a metal trash can, spearing them with the poker from her fireplace until every last piece of the embossed crosses and the names and the dates had turned to ash.

As Hilda takes her place in the mother-of-the bride pew, she hears the shuffle of feet on the slate aisle, and out of the corner of her eye she feels someone staring at her. When she turns, she sees it is Dodi, her ex-husband's girlfriend's daughter and the junior bridesmaid of the wedding party. Dodi bites the inside of her chubby cheek as she stares Hilda down. Hilda shakes her head in disapproval and turns to watch Giuseppe's relatives file in behind her, speaking in hushed Italian words.

When Dodi turns to talk to one of the acolytes, Hilda glances back and studies her. Her dull brown hair is curled in ringlets, and she's wearing a pale shade of lipstick and dangly, rhinestone earrings that are far too old for her. What is she, nine or ten? She's in an iridescent green full-length dress that looks like it was made for a 1980s prom, and she has these bushy black eyebrows that would put Brooke Shields to shame. Hilda looks around for Trudi, who ought to be appalled at how tacky her child is dressed, but she is nowhere to be seen. Hilda smirks at the possibility of having run her off from this gathering.

Now Ray, a patch over her black, swollen eye, directs everyone to the proper pews. She's decked out in a tailored pink linen suit with her mother-in-law's pearl hummingbird on her lapel. Hilda can't believe the stamina Ray has. If Hilda had hit a deer, she'd still be lying in bed with ice packs on her face.

“The south side is for the groom's family and the north side for the bride's,” Ray calls. Vangie Dreggs stands like an unwanted shadow directly behind Ray. Naturally, she wants to join the Wedding Guild, and it is Ray's charge to show her the ropes.

Hilda turns back to greet her future in-laws, Anatole and Fiorella Giornelli. Now try saying that three times without getting your tongue tied!

“Hello,” she says as Fiorella squeezes her hand and Anatole winks.

Hilda's not exactly fond of the pair after they put pressure on Little Hilda to convert to Catholicism before the wedding. It just annoys her to death how the Catholics think they're the only ones bound for heaven. How they don't even invite
her
, a descendant of a long line of landed-gentry Episcopalians, to their communion table because they think all non-Catholics are out-and-out doomed to hell! It really infuriates Hilda, and she is proud of Little Hilda for saying no, and of Giuseppe for standing behind her choice.

Just as Hilda tries to think of something else to say to the Giornellis, Capers shouts, “The Lord be with you,” which means he is ready to get this show on the road.

God bless Sis. She's had to coordinate musical efforts with LeMar and two of the Giornellis' cousins, one who is a baritone and the other who is a trumpeter. The trumpeter's flight from New York to Charleston was cancelled this afternoon due to tropical storm Eleanor, and no one knows if he'll make it or not. The baritone, who has performed at the Met among other impressive venues, has a marriage partner of the same sex who is a dentist. Hilda was informed about this by Giuseppe and Little Hilda just a few weeks before they mailed the invitations, and the gals just about pulled their hair out trying to determine the etiquette of how to address his wedding invitation. Since Hilda is not only the seamstress of the bunch, but also the gal with the most elegant penmanship, they gathered at her house to go over the list, and Ray even checked out updated versions of
Emily Post's Etiquette
and
Crane's
Blue Book of Stationery
from the library to see how they should address the invitation.