The Wedding Machine (20 page)

As Kitty B. takes her seat on the dock, she pats the dogs who are vying for her attention. Their muddy paws leave streaks across her apron. It's the hot pink apron that the gals bought her when she finished the church cookbook, and it has “Editor-in-Chief,
Lowcountry
Manna
” embroidered on the front with the publication date.

The gals seem excited about Katie Rae's engagement. Kitty B. doesn't know why LeMar can't be. It's been a fast courtship, but goodness knows they never thought Katie Rae was ever going to move out of their house, much less meet a man and marry him. It's a practical miracle as far as Kitty B. can tell, and as happy as Marshall is, it seems
they
should be thanking the good Lord for His grace.

Now the goats bleat across the fence as the sun makes its way down toward the water's edge. When it rises again Kitty B. will drive LeMar down to the Medical University in Charleston for his third MRI of the year. The old paranoid curmudgeon.

He's been sick and aching more often than not since she's known him, and some days it seems like he takes great satisfaction in his sufferings the way a tongue can't help but work its way over a sore tooth.

The doctors will look at him. Look at the inner workings of his body and wonder why he is such a head case. Why he wants to believe that he has some fatal disease.
Then they'll look at me
. She shakes her head
. They'll look at me and wonder, “Why does this fellow
want to die so badly? He must have an astoundingly horrible home life.”

Some days she'd like to leave him at the hospital for the nurses and doctors to deal with for a few weeks. Isn't it terrible to think like that? She knows it's not right, but
good grief
, she can't help herself.

Tomorrow she'd like to hand him over to the nurse and then make like she's going to the waiting room to snip recipes from her cooking magazines, and the next thing you know she'd be halfway down I-26 to her cousin's house in Roanoke, Virginia. Or maybe she could go to one of those weight loss spas in Arizona or drive to the airport and catch a plane to New York City, where she'd make her way to Rockefeller Center and stand outside the
Today
show studio, holding up a sign that reads, “Get well soon, LeMar!” before stepping back into the folds of the crowd.

Just as she pictures the look on LeMar's face while he reads the
Today
show sign on the screen in front of his hospital bed, Katie Rae and Marshall come around the mouth of the Ashepoo River and toward the dock. The wind pulls back her daughter's thin dark hair so that it dances behind her like the streamers in a wind sock. Her intended's arm rests on her back as she turns the boat around and eases up to the marsh bank.

When Marshall scurries to the bow of the boat to grab the line, Kitty B. reaches out her hand, and he throws it to her. She tugs them toward the edge of the dock and ties the line tight as the dogs bark in delight.

“Where's Daddy?” Katie Rae says, looking toward the porch.

Kitty B. looks back to see the rocking chair empty in the shadows of the autumn dusk.

“Who knows?” she says, reaching out to help them out of the bobbing boat. “Maybe he's run away.”
Maybe he beat me to it.

“No ma'am,” says Marshall pointing up toward the house, where LeMar teeters on the threshold with four of her mama's old crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne.

He nods his head in an invitation, and they walk across the yard toward him as Honey and Otis sniff each other and Rhetta bolts past them toward the porch, yipping at a high pitch as if she understands that the time has come to celebrate.

Katie Rae follows suit and Marshall even breaks into a little jog on the way toward the sloping porch.

Looks like we're going to have a wedding
. Kitty B. hopes to high heaven that Katie Rae doesn't have her heart set on having it out here. This is a beautiful spot, but it would cost them a fortune to get the place in shape. The house needs a paint job something awful, and their yard is nothing more than holes of black dirt where the dogs dig and sniff and do their business.

Now Otis and Honey chase each other around Kitty B.'s legs as if to round her up as LeMar embraces his baby girl and his future son-in-law in the center of the sloping porch. Kitty B. hears the cork pop, and she watches as it ricochets off the porch roof and lands in the browning azalea bushes by the steps.

“Hurry up, Mama!” Katie Rae calls. “It's time for a toast.”

Mr. and Mrs. Cecil LeMar Blalock

request the honour of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter

Katherine Rae
to
Doctor Roscoe Marshall Bennington, Junior

on friday, the thirtieth of December
two thousand and five
at six o'clock
christ on the coast cathedral
charleston, south carolina
and afterwards the reception
at the home of the bride

TWELVE

Ray

A barbeque in Jasper County does not mean hamburgers and chicken breasts on a fancy gas grill. Yankees call anything you cook outside “barbeque.” The word
barbeque
in Ray's neck of the woods is a
noun
, not a verb, and it means a whole hog tied to a spit with chicken wire and rope and roasted in an outdoor oven, usually in someone's backyard or some parking lot. And the fixin's that must accompany it are baked beans, collard greens, white rolls, cole slaw, and rice topped with a sweet gravy made from the drippings and other unmentionables that the pack calls hash. Jasper folks sort of take the “don't ask, don't tell” approach with the hash
. We don't want to know what's in it
, Ray thinks,
but it sure
tastes good.

Cousin Willy hosts a barbeque in honor of Ray's birthday every few years in their backyard, and it's always the same thing: a fifty-pound hog he buys from Marvin's Meats that he cooks slowly on the charcoal pit by the dock. He's been rotating the beast every hour since sunrise, and Ray has never seen him so excited.

“Whatcha got up your sleeve?” she asked him as he and Justin shooed her out of the shed this morning.

“You'll find out,” he says, trying to conceal a grin. “Now go on and get ready for your shopping spree.”

He's even consulted with the gals on this party, and they've brought over red and white checked tablecloths for the tables he hauled over from his office. Hilda is out there right now putting out Miss C. and the cutest little old-fashioned ceramic piggy banks on the tables which R.L. has stuffed with sweet little arrangements of bright orange zinnias and black-eyed Susans and forget-me-nots. This is the one party that Ray stays out of, but she is thankful that the gals guide Cousin Willy with the decor, invitations, and the guest list.

“I've only got one request,” she said to him a few weeks ago when he started making the birthday plans.

“Name it,” he said as he scribbled down the menu on a legal pad.

“Just don't invite that Texas transplant, and I'll be happy as a clam.”

Cousin Willy scanned the guest list and found Vangie Dreggs's name and address.

“Kitty B. put her on here,” he said, and he squinted with concern.

Ray's stomach tightened, and she could feel the heat rising up and around her neck.

“That's because Kitty B. doesn't see what I see.”

“And what's that?” he said. “You know Vangie's gotten real involved with the civic life around here and the ACE Basin preservation, and it might just hurt her feelings, Ray.”

“You mean
you
are letting her buy her way in too?” Ray picked up an old copy of the church bulletin in the mail pile and fanned her face. “I've told you before, the woman is bad news, and I've been around her enough now to
know.
She's bringing strange ideas into the church and she's selling old family properties to people from way off. Before long we'll be surrounded by strangers and dark houses that serve as second homes that the owners will use once or twice a year. What kind of civic life will that yield, Cousin?”

“C'mon now, Ray,” he said, his eyes turning soft on her. “It does a place good to freshen up the gene pool from time to time. You can't deny that can you, sweet?”

As she started to throw the bulletin at him, she saw Vangie Dreggs's name at the top of the page of announcements. The Lone Star had joined the flower guild and the altar guild, and Capers had appointed her as the new head of the evangelism committee too. Under her committee title she had written a bold and capitalized blurb that said, “HEALING PRAYER REVIVAL DAY—JANUARY 5TH. MARK YOUR CALENDARS!”

Oh brother.
Ray threw the whole thing at Willy. It fell apart in midair and landed at his feet.

“I'm not talking about gene pools,” she said. “I'm talking about my fifty-fifth birthday, and I do not want that woman spoiling the evening with her booming voice and her fake eyeballs and her less than appropriate talk of real estate and healing prayer, all right?”

Willy picked up the bulletin and read the blurb, then chuckled. “It's your party,” he said. Then he stood up and put his arm around her, which would have been nice had she not been so durn
hot.

“Thank you,” she said smiling at him as she thought,
If this
doesn't send her a message then nothing will.

Cousin Willy pulled Ray close to his thick chest and said, “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

That is the truth. He does want me to enjoy myself
, Ray thinks. Today the marquee in front of the Jasper Motor Lodge reads, “Happy Birthday, Ray,” and so does the digital sign at the National Bank of South Carolina, and she knows it's all his doing.

And so is the fact that their son, William, came into town from Atlanta with Carson, his chic and urbane wife. They drive up around lunchtime in this sporty little convertible BMW with the top down. During their driveway conversation, Ray looks at her reflection in the mirrored sunglasses covering her son and daughter-in-law's eyes—a short round version of herself like the one she stares at in the wavy mirror at the county fair.

“I see myself in your glasses, Will,” Justin says as he rides up on his bicycle with a roll of wrapping paper in a Family Dollar bag.

“Oh, yeah,” William says. He pulls off his glasses and lets them drop around his neck on the nylon strap that holds them together in the back.

Carson rubs her painted lips together. They are so glossy that Ray expects to see her reflection in them too. Then Carson pulls off her sunglasses and snaps them into a bright red case with Armani written across the top of it.

Carson is from a wealthy Atlanta family, and she and William are both lawyers at the same labor law firm. Truth be told, Ray has always resented her a little for wooing William away from his home. Of course Jasper could never compete with Hotlanta, but Ray kind of thought William would eventually settle back down here and get interested in state politics. He's shown zero interest in that since Carson entered the picture.