The Wedding Machine (17 page)

“Capers,” she says, leaning in to him. There is a little pool of drool spilling out of his mouth, and when she nudges him all she can smell is her Uncle Bugby. He's deep into his champagne-induced slumber, and Sis guesses she'll have to load him up and get Cousin Willy to help her take him over to the rectory.

Well, she doesn't want to walk over to the gals and disappoint them with her perpetual lack of romantic activity, and she's still in the mood to dance, so she just stands on the seawall by herself and sways back and forth to the Embers and the sound of Salvatore playing his trumpet in the oak trees behind her. As she dances, she watches Giuseppe and Little Hilda, who are touring the waterway on Kitty B.'s brother's fifty-foot yacht. What an exit for them!

They are dancing too, on the deck, stepping back and forth as the wind gusts blow Little Hilda's lace veil up and around her.
They
have their whole lives ahead of them,
Sis thinks. A trip to the Italian Riviera and a tour of Tuscany, where Giuseppe's family is from, then back to a nice little condo in Alexandria, Virginia, that sits right by a subway stop that will carry them to Capitol Hill each day.

As Sis sways, she thinks about the seeds the trees drop before a hurricane, and wonders why humans don't have this kind of eminent drive. At least she never did. She should have gotten busier trying to pollinate before her doctor sent her to be carved out. It didn't hit her until recently that she has no linkage. No next generation. No mark on the world. Nothing to outlive her.

The gals say this is not true, that she has her music and her piano students, but she suspects she's missed something. Everything else in her life trotted at the same pace with rest of the pack. She grew up, went through puberty, fell in love, got a degree, and a job—but it stopped right there, and she can't help but think she's been in a holding pattern ever since. That her midlife is just a shadow of her friends' experiences. That her legacy is nothing more than a little winged fruit from a live oak tree that lands in the surf only to be swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean that licks the shore incessantly with its forceful tongue.

Now she watches the river rats furrowing in and out of the rocks along the seawall and she imagines the alligators and the herons and the snakes on the banks of the ACE Basin warming themselves in the last minutes of daylight.

Before long, Ray and Kitty B. come over with a slice of cake and a bottle of champagne. They have worked themselves to the bone, and they finally got rid of Vangie, who is more of a nuisance than a help with her constant need for instructions and approval. Ray takes one look at Capers passed out on the seawall. “Well, take a look at Romeo!”

Kitty B. giggles and Sis joins them as they take their place on the water's edge, letting their feet dangle over the seawall. They talk about how beautiful it all was and how Senator Warren ought to have been impressed and how happy Giuseppe and Hilda looked and how thankful they were that Hilda made it through the event without breaking down and how Priscilla took a real liking to Giuseppe's friend and how strange the money bag was and how Angus had to get Mason Kidd to open the bank on a Saturday afternoon so he could safely store the cash in the lockbox and how obvious it is that Capers Campbell likes Sis if he invited her to come out and dance on the seawall with him.

As the horizon turns from a pale gray to a fiery pink, the gals laugh and toast and watch Little Hilda and Giuseppe's yacht make its way beneath the bridge and around the bend as the herons and pelicans and terns flap their wings back to their damp and damaged homes to roost.

TEN

Hilda

Hilda didn't want to come out to the beach this weekend, what with all the memories of her and Angus on Edisto. But the gals just insisted that she come, and she owes them all such a debt of gratitude. Especially Ray, who practically put her daughter's wedding together single-handedly and pushed on through the weekend, car wreck, wounds, and all. And Hilda knows how badly Ray wants to show off the work she's done on the Montgomery beach house in the last year. Plus, it's Ray's birthday next week, and Cousin Willy is having a big barbeque to celebrate, and Hilda's already sent her regrets since she's avoiding Angus and Trudi. Maybe he'll notice her missing and come to his senses.

Hilda grew up vacationing at the house two doors down from the Montgomerys'. The yellow one right in front of the washout where the beach curves toward the bay and the ocean peters out and becomes the sound. Her older brother, Davy, used to shoot off Roman candles at the end of the boardwalk, and her mama would smile her hundred-watt smile and wave to them from the screened porch. Her mama always wore a wide straw hat at the beach and white rimmed sunglasses with black lenses, and she didn't think Hilda could see her sleeping or weeping behind them.

When her daddy came home, Hilda's mama took to the bed, where she watched Ed Sullivan and smoked NOW cigarettes with an empty conch shell for an ashtray on her lap.

“What are you thinking about, Hilda?” Sis says. They are sitting on the freshly painted white wicker furniture at the end of Ray's porch sipping a strong pink drink that Vangie Dreggs whipped up in a blender.

“What are we drinking?” Hilda says, ignoring Sis. Maybe if she downs a couple of cocktails she can excuse herself to her room for the night.

Ray leans in to say “Cos-mo-pol-i-tan,” as Vangie bends Kitty B.'s ear about the properties she's considering for her second home.

“Tell me that's not the most ironic thing in the world,” Ray adds, shaking her head. The swelling has gone down around her eye and her stitches have dissolved, but Hilda can't help but cringe at the fresh red scar above her friend's right cheekbone.

“Ray,” Sis says in a hushed tone.

Ray lifts her eyebrows. Hilda takes another sip in hopes that the icy drink will calm her nerves. She's just not used to being out like this, though she has to admit the sea air smells awfully good.

“I'm not over it,” Ray says as she leans in toward the wicker coffee table to pick up the bowl of stone crab claws to pass around.

Hilda rolls her eyes. Now who is Ray talking to? She isn't exactly sure what transpired, but somehow Vangie Dreggs invited herself to the weekend, and Ray had no way of telling her no. Frankly, Hilda is thankful. It gets everyone's focus off her.

“Why, thank you, Ray,” Vangie says, dunking her claw into the creamy curry dip. “I think South Carolinians are simply the most hospitable in all the country.”

Kitty B. says, “Well, that's nice of you to say.” She sees no rattle on Vangie's tail.

Ray bites the inside of her cheek and hands out her new square linen napkins. They have a pinkish-orange crab embroidered on them, and they match the white and salmon-colored striped cushions on the wicker furniture. Ray is one of those people who likes for everything to match in a cutesy kind of way at her beach house, and for some reason this annoys Hilda. The beach is one of the few places that can and should be rustic and random with a hodgepodge of furniture and decor.

“I just read the other day that Charleston was voted the friendliest city in this big national survey,” Sis adds.

“Maybe that's why the Yankees are flocking down here like there's no tomorrow,” Ray says.

“Mmm. Mmm,” Vangie says as she slurps her drink. “That's true, but I'll tell you those Yankees are going to bring a lot of money into this area, and we'll all be better for it.”

Ray clears her throat and shakes her head.

“You're from Charleston, aren't you, Ray?” Vangie asks. “Tell me who your family is there.”

Ray sits up on the edge of the rocking chair, pushes back her shoulders, focuses on a patch in the screen just beyond Vangie, and says, “The Pringles.”

“Oh my, the Pringles,” Vangie says. “You know my sister says they are one of the oldest families in the city. In fact she pointed out one of their old houses to me—the pale yellow one on the high battery with the triple-story piazzas. My word, those ceilings must be fourteen feet tall!”

“Yes,” Ray says. “I spent a lot of time there.”

Sis lets out a nervous giggle, and Hilda feels like causing some trouble.

“Ray grew up in that yellow house,” Hilda says. “At least that's what we've come to assume. I don't know why she's so guarded about the whole thing.”

Ray shoots a look in Hilda's direction. “I'm not
guarded
.”

“Sure you are.” Hilda rubs the knobby outline of the pink crab on the linen napkin she's draped across her knee. “In all the years we've known you, you've never once told us a story about your childhood.” “Oh, tell me a story!” Vangie says. She puts her cocktail down and spreads out her fingers like she's in a jazz dance number. “You know I'm writing a book! About Texas and the healing ministry and my small group and South Carolina and real estate and all of the amazing things that have happened to me since I came to the Lord, and I want to include all of you in it!”

Ray shoots Hilda a look, then says to Sis, “Can you go stir the Creole for me?”

“Okay,” Sis says, “but don't start the story without me.”

Kitty B. grabs the acrylic pitcher of cosmopolitans to refill the glasses, and all eyes are on Ray when she sits down in her large wicker rocking chair. The rocker's back is tall and round and it fans out around her like a throne, and Hilda has to admit, she's enjoying this. Ray, with her clandestine past and her whole life so maddeningly together. She's bugged Hilda ever since the night she won the watermelon-stealing contest back in high school, all dressed up in her linen pedal pushers and her white eyelet shirt.

Instead of sitting back and rocking, Ray moves to the edge of her pink and white striped cushion and begins. “We lived with my great-aunt, Lindy Pringle. It was my sister and Mama and me. My father died in the war.”

As Ray's face reddens, she pats it with her napkin and continues. “Anyhow, I remember when we bought our first television. It was the day before Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and Mama had sewn Laura and me matching dresses to wear because Great-Aunt Lindy had invited all of her friends over to see the ceremony on the new television. It was a lovely affair—very formal and very Charleston with ‘Oh Be Joyful' punch and cheese biscuits and cucumber sandwiches and candied pecans. Most everyone in Charleston is an Anglophile, you know?”

Ray looks down and brushes some sand off the side of her leg. Then she rubs her fingers back and forth across the woven arms of the wicker chair at least four times before they realize that this is the end of the story.

“Ah, well, that's nice, Ray,” Vangie says. “I can picture it! Do you have any photos?”

“Well, not
here
.” Ray scratches around her fresh scar. “I've got some at home. How did that Creole look, Sis? Think we're about ready to drop the shrimp in?”

“Yeah,” Sis says, sipping her drink.

“Say, Ray,” Hilda adds, “that's not much of a
story
.”

Ray's back bristles, and Hilda can't imagine why she's enjoying herself so much.

“You know, I have to agree,” Kitty B. giggles. “I've got a much better story about that coronation.”

“Let's hear it!” Vangie says, her emerald eyes glistening in the porch light. “I'm all ears.”

Then Kitty B. tells a story about how her daddy, Mayor Hathaway, invited the whole community of Jasper to the Town Hall to watch the coronation on their new television. Shortly after a large group gathered, her brother Jackson tripped over the cord when her other brother, Buzz, was chasing him, and the television fell over and crashed. Then the whole town raced out of the building because kooky old Mr. Sandeman shouted, “There are fumes from inside that machine that can poison you!”

The gals all hoot and holler and laugh about how Kitty B.'s daddy and Old Stained Glass and the town doctor before Angus, Virgil McDougal, went ever so cautiously back into Town Hall wearing operating masks to survey the damage.

After they catch their breath, Sis says, “Look at that sunset,” and they turn to watch the fiery orange ball make its way behind the Pines of Otter Island in just a few short minutes.

When they sit down to dinner, Vangie Dreggs tells some crazy stories about her childhood on a cattle ranch in Grand Saline, Texas, that involved her spirited grandmother and a pack of angry dwarf goats.

“Now that's a story!” Sis laughs as she passes the biscuits a second time.

Kitty B. takes two. “I'll say.”

Hilda looks at Ray. “You could take a lesson in storytelling from Vangie Dreggs, Ray.”

Ray's face reddens, and she stands up and picks up her plate and Sis's.

“Hilda, I wouldn't have invited you to come along if I thought you were going to be critiquing me every second.”

The table gets quiet as Ray takes the plates over to the sink and comes back for more. “There's key lime pie on the counter for dessert,” she says, “and decaf brewing in the pot. I think I'm going to turn in for the night.” She picks up Hilda's plate.