The Wedding Machine (23 page)

There's not a thing in this world that could ruin this moment for Ray. Not a hot flash, not a trip to Dr. Arhundati, not even the fact that her hair is falling out in clumps or that her children live too far away with no plans to return. Sometimes she worries that time is passing by faster than she ever thought it would. Other times she fears she'll wake up one day only to realize she is older and weaker than she ever imagined. Or that her friends will finally see her for the farce she is—a bastard girl, the daughter of a housekeeper, who has no right to be the First Lady of Jasper. But she shoves all of that to the side for tonight. It's a celebration, after all. It's her moment to revel, and she knows she would be a fool not to savor it.

Ray tiptoes to the bathroom and puts her arms around Willy's hips as he swooshes mouthwash around in his puffed cheeks.

“Thank you,” she says as she squeezes him tight. “Thank you for a wonderful birthday.”

She rests her chin on his soft, bare shoulder and gives him that knowing look in the bathroom mirror. He wipes his mouth and turns to face her, and she leads him to the bed where she turns off the lights, and they quietly make love as the moonlight glistens on Round-O Creek and their grown children talk and laugh around the fire on the dock in their backyard.

The next day, after Ray feeds the kids a hearty breakfast and gets them headed on their way back home, she goes over her notes for a wedding session with the gals that Sis will host in her apartment this afternoon. Time is ticking on Katie Rae and Marshall's wedding, and there is a lot that needs to be pulled together in the next week—namely the ordering of the invitations and the guest list—if they are ever going to make it.

When the doorbell rings, she thinks it's probably no one as usual. These days the testy thing is activated by almost any large truck barreling down the road. Willy has got to fix it! It rings twice more before she realizes someone must really be at the door.

“Hi, Ray,” Vangie Dreggs says. She stands there all polished and painted in a white fur vest and cream wool pants, her big white horse teeth grinning. Little Bit is sniffing around Ray's topiary, and Vangie shakes a big box wrapped in shiny silver paper that says “Happy Birthday” across it.

“Hello, Vangie.” Ray is shocked at the sight of her.

“Well, I just wanted to drop a little something off for you.”

“Thank you,” Ray says. She doesn't want to ask her in, but Vangie just stands there, smiling and shifting her weight from side to side, and Ray doesn't see how she can avoid it.

“Can't you come in for a cup of coffee on the piazza?” she says. “I'd love to,” Vangie says. “I hope the party was a grand success.” She picks Little Bit up and follows Ray through the dining room to the kitchen. “I'll just put him in the backyard.”

“Good,” Ray says, and she pours her a cup of coffee.

Little Bit barks all around the yard nipping at Tuxedo's tail in an effort to rouse him as Vangie sits on the porch sipping coffee and asking Ray in detail about the party: who was there, what were the presents, how were the kids, wasn't she surprised.
How does she know
so much?
The gall! This woman is a scandal. She can somehow break every rule in the etiquette book and continue on in life. It's obscene.

Ray studies Vangie, her painted lips and her perfectly fixed white hair.

“Now, look, Ray, I want to ask your help with something.”

“Oh,” Ray says. “What is it?”

“I want you to help me coordinate the Healing Prayer Revival Day. It's going to bless the socks off the community the way it did for me in Houston when I first attended one. It literally changed my whole outlook on life.” Vangie claps her hand gently. “Now you are one of the most influential people in town, First Lady, and I think that if you participate, others will follow suit.”

What a piece of work
.
Bringing me a guilt-ridden birthday gift and
then goading me into her wacky revival day.
Well, Ray's not going to be painted into this corner
.

As she opens her mouth to refuse the request, she hears a splash and a yelp and a
thwomp
.

“Little Bit!” Vangie races to the edge of the deck where she sees that a good-sized alligator has her Jack Russell's hindquarter between his jaws. As the gator starts to spin, Vangie runs out into the yard and down into the marsh where she sinks into the pluff mud.

“No!” she cries. “No!”

Cousin Willy comes running around from the driveway. He must have just gotten back from the airport. He bolts in the water and swims toward the gator as Little Bit makes one more yelp before the gator dunks him under. Justin runs out of the shed with a rope that he throws to Willy, who knots it and leaps toward the bubbles coming up from the center of the creek.

A few yards away Ray spots the gator's tail swishing fast on the way toward the other side of the bank. He's gotten away with Little Bit in his jowls, and he doesn't resurface until an hour later when his eyes pop up near the marsh on the opposite bank as Ray and Willy console Vangie Dreggs, who weeps hysterically on the edge of the creek, pulling at her helmet of hair and rocking her head back and forth in disbelief.

“I'm so sorry,” Willy says as he pats her back with his wet hands.

“We really are,” Ray hears herself say.

Vangie turns to Ray and looks at her inquisitively; then she throws herself into Ray's arms and hugs her tighter than she's ever been hugged before, her large head resting in the crook of Ray's neck as the new turquoise necklace from Carson digs into her collar bone. “I know y'all are, Ray,” she says. “I know y'all are.”

THIRTEEN

Hilda

When Hilda peeks out the window by her sewing table, her throat tightens. Angus is parallel parking his car on the street just in front of the wrought iron gates. He hasn't stepped foot in their home in over a year, and she doesn't move a muscle as she watches him carefully unlatch the gate and stride toward the front door.

She quickly drops her cigarette in her teacup and races to the hall mirror to inspect herself. She hasn't put on a drop of makeup today, and she's still in her nightgown and the long, brown silk house robe she put on this morning when she came downstairs to work on a new set of curtains for the breakfast room.

She grabs a tube of old lipstick that she keeps in the antique desk in the foyer and quickly applies it before opening the door.

“Good afternoon, Hilda,” Angus says. He's still in his church suit—a gray houndstooth with a green and white striped bow tie. “Well, hello,” she says, stepping to the side to let him by. “Come on in, Doctor.”

Her cheeks redden as she feels her heart pound intensely. For a moment she wonders if Angus can actually hear it; then she shakes her head and pulls the sash on her robe tight. She can't believe how worked up she is, but she knows there is a part of her that has imagined, no—more than that—
hoped
, he would come walking back through the door of their home in an effort to make amends.

Yes, she's been chilly to him in public, but surely he knows the reason why. She was devastated when he left, and she desperately misses the life they shared. Even the most mundane details like the sound of his calm voice on the phone with his patients, the smell of his aftershave and the sight of those little bits of Kleenex he tears and puts on his face when he cuts his chin shaving. Most of all, she misses his kindness. He was always looking after her, bandaging her finger when she pricked it with a sewing pin and rubbing her temples gently when her migraines came on.

“May I sit?” he says as they walk into the den that looks out over the back piazza and the salt marsh. The yard man cancelled on her last week, and the pittosporum bushes need a pruning something awful. Shaggy and thick, they cast a gray shadow over the white wrought iron bench in the garden.

“Please.” She nods at him. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you,” he says, looking up at her. He motions toward the sofa and takes a seat on the far end. “We need to talk.”

Hilda smoothes out her silk robe and takes a seat next to him. Her bony knees knock together beneath the shimmery fabric, and she squeezes them tight in an effort to still them.

“Listen, Hilda,” Angus says. “I don't know any other way to say this except to come right out with it.”

She nods and tries to smile. She hopes her bare cheeks aren't too shiny, and she wishes she had taken the time to fix her face this morning. Nonetheless, this is the moment she's been waiting for, and she straightens her shoulders and lets her lips relax into a faint grin.

He nods and looks around the den of his old home. He stops for a moment, and she watches his eyes settle on the portrait of Hilda and Little Hilda above the fireplace. In the painting Hilda sits on the white bench in the garden, and Little Hilda stands beside her, her arm resting on her mother's shoulder. She gave the portrait to Angus for Christmas the year before Little Hilda graduated from high school. She can remember Little Hilda pulling off the sheet above the fireplace and Angus's eyes brimming with tears.

Now Angus looks back at her. “Trudi and I have set a date. We're getting married.”

Hilda clears her throat as a wave of heat rushes over her. It starts at the top of her head and works its way down into her neck. Her chest burns as if she has just leaned against the old radiator in the house by the paper mill. She thinks of that radiator from her childhood and how it rattled for two days when her father turned it on after the first freeze of the season. She swallows hard, and she can't find any words.

What a fool she is. What a fool to think this visit was about anything other than his final step away from her. She adjusts her posture, fans herself with her hands. “All right.” She nods emphatically. “Thank you for telling me.” Then she stands and motions toward the foyer. “Let me see you to the door.”

He follows her lead as she escorts him to the foyer. She feels a drop of perspiration roll down her cheek, and she bites the bottom of her painted lips.

“Hilda,” he says. “Trudi and are going to do this fast. We've been together for a while, you know.”

“Yes,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You must be very ready.”

She swings open the door, but he stops it midway and closes it gently back.

“We're getting married in a few weeks—Thanksgiving night, in fact. I want you to know so you won't be shocked when you hear it from the gals.”

“Aren't you considerate, Angus,” she says. She bites her lip again and closes her eyes in an effort hold back her tears. She's so hot she thinks she might faint.

“There's more,” he says. He reaches out and lightly touches her shoulder with his fingertips as if to steady her from a great distance. “Trudi and I have bought a little place on deep water on the north side of Edisto Island, so we won't be living in town anymore. I'm going to retire in a few years, and I thought it was wise to go ahead and settle on a retirement spot.”

One blow after another. Several years ago Hilda and Angus chose a plot of land on the south side of Edisto as a spot where they might one day retire. They bought it just before Little Hilda graduated from high school, and they even built a crab dock out over the marsh. The three of them would travel out there on a pretty Sunday afternoon and feast on a picnic at the end of the dock. As Angus and Little Hilda set the crab traps and waited for supper, Hilda would flip through her
Southern Living
magazines and point to the house plans that might work for their spot. She even had the whole thing drawn up by an architect in Charleston—a white clapboard two-story wedge-style plantation house with double piazzas and a red tin roof.

Angus received the lot in the settlement. Hilda got the house in town.

She takes a deep breath and refuses to look Angus in the eye. She can't believe he has no inkling of what she's longed for these last two years and no desire to reconcile with her. She's been holding out for him to come back around. She has prayed to the God she fears—
begged
Him in the black hours of the night. She knew she needed a miracle; it was the only way she could return to the life she loved, their life together. She could not help herself from clinging to the hope of it.

Hilda shakes her head in disbelief. The pinprick of tears burns her eyes, but she wipes them away quickly with the heels of her hand.

“Angus,” she says, removing his hand from her shoulder. “You're an idiot to go through with this. To marry that tubby, tacky beauty shop manicurist. It's ridiculous! It's embarrassing! It's—”

“It's right for me,” he says. His eyes narrow and he takes her by the elbow this time. She can feel his firm grasp beneath the thin sleeves of her gown, and she flinches before taking a step back.

“Hilda, she's a good woman.” She turns and walks toward the den. “She's warm and loving, do you hear me? She's not locked up in some strange world of pain or numbness or whatever it is. And if she ever got that way, I'll bet my right arm she would
do
something about it.”