The Wedding Machine (5 page)

She tends the gardenias in the early morning when the rest of the town is asleep. She is saving these blooms for Priscilla's wedding, which she has been planning for decades now. It will truly be the most exquisite event Jasper has ever witnessed. A far cry from the meager reception that her mama pieced together in her backyard for Ray and Cousin Willy more than thirty years ago. Poor Mama had blown through Mrs. Pringle's money by then, and it was all she could do to offer a little punch and a lopsided wedding cake, which she baked layer by layer over a week's time in her small gas oven. It was an embarrassment in comparison to the elegant reception Roberta created for Kitty B.

Now as Ray repositions the crystal vases on the top gift shelf, she can't help but let her eye wander through the dining room window and across Third Street to Kitty B.'s old childhood home. The one where Peaches peed on Hilda's curled hair and Sis and Fitz spent the night in the shadows of the rooftop over thirty-six years ago.

~ JUNE 8, 1969 ~

Ray watched Roberta through the netting of her yellow bridesmaid's pillbox cap. She wanted to record her every gesture so she could one day imitate them. Roberta's white gloves were wrapped around the handle of the wide sweetgrass basket, and Ray marveled at how she could simultaneously pat her pale pink silk cap to keep her little extra boost of a hairpiece in place while offering the rice sacks to the wedding guests.

Then Roberta had them all line up along the brick pathway that led to the sidewalk and Third Street, where Mayor Hathaway's Lincoln Continental was parked, covered with shaving cream and a long string of Budweiser beer cans that stretched out for at least three yards. Angus and Willy's work, no doubt.

All of a sudden, Kitty B. appeared above their heads at the top of the piazza in a stunning going-away suit—a raw silk dress from Berlin's with a double-breasted overcoat to match. The suit had wide yellow and chartreuse stripes and a yellow straw hat. LeMar joined her in a seersucker suit with a yellow and blue striped bow tie, the first layer of his double chin already spilling over the lip of a starched oxford collar. After a few hoots and hollers up to the newlyweds, Kitty B. threw her bridal bouquet down. It landed right in Sis's outstretched hands—an old-fashioned cascade of white roses, stephanotis, and ivy cut from the vines that climbed the south side of the Hathaway home.

As Ray tore open her tulle sack that day and poured a little rice in Cousin Willy and Sis's cupped hands, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil LeMar Blalock trotted down the stairs and out into the green front lawn. The guests chased after them and threw rice at the tops of their heads. Mayor Hathaway's driver, Enoch, waited by the car door to carry the newlyweds to the Sea Island resort on the Georgia coast.

Ray tossed the rice and lifted her skirt to chase after the newlyweds, but she stopped after a few strides to take in their glorious exit as they scurried on the balls of their feet down the brick path. Kitty B. kissed her mama along the way, and then, all of a sudden, she slipped, and for a moment it looked as though she might not regain her balance from the white grains spinning beneath her chartreuse Pappagallo pumps. Then LeMar grabbed her gently by the elbow and steadied her just enough for her to regain her balance, and they ran for the car, where Enoch closed the door behind them.

Sis chased after the car screaming with delight as the car moved slowly down Third Street, the Budweiser cans rattling behind them. Angus pulled Hilda close, and Hilda stepped away for decorum's sake as her uptight father cleared his throat behind them. She cupped her blond curls, bouncing them in the palm of her manicured hands. Willy interlaced his stout fingers with Ray's as Mayor Hathaway and Roberta stood arm in arm, waving to the silver Lincoln, the sunlight glinting off the hubcaps and the metal rearview mirror before it crossed over the railroad tracks, turned right onto Main, and drove out of sight.

Before the salt marsh turned brown for the autumn that year and the first oysters of the season were harvested, Ray tied the knot with Willy, and Hilda did the same with Angus, and Sis wrote Fitz tender love letters addressed to his unit, though he'd stepped on a land mine in the Quang Tri Province by the time the first one arrived.

Fitz came home just before Thanksgiving in a pine box draped in an American flag, and they buried him in the Hungerford family plot in the All Saints churchyard. Sis still takes a bouquet or a plant over to his gravestone on the anniversary they had set for their wedding—May 6, 1970.

The front doorbell rings unexpectedly, and Ray is so caught off guard that she nearly loses her balance. Cousin Willy installed a new doorbell a few weeks ago that he bought on the cheap from one of those mega home stores in Columbia, and it rings from time to time on its own for no reason at all, which she finds quite disconcerting.

Of course, it's probably just R.L. with another shipment of flowers. She
knows
she ordered more lilies of the valley than he delivered. Or it could be Paley's Jewelers with a new wedding gift for the display. Then again, it might be her overactive imagination, and the chimes have not sounded except for in her mind, where she longs to see one of the faces of her past: Roberta, Mama, Fitz, or Laura, her younger sister, who she hasn't seen since she ran off two years ago with a fellow patient in her rehab clinic.

By the time Ray gets to the foyer, her heart pounds like the bass drum in the William Bull High School marching band, and she braces herself as she opens the large maple front door. No one is standing on the front steps of her house, and as she peers out into the yard, all is quiet and still. Something must have triggered the bell—a delivery truck moving down the street or a squirrel scurrying across the gutters. The thick air fills her lungs, and she looks down at the bits and pieces of slate laid out in a semicircle at the bottom of her steps. The arc connects with a path that leads to her new driveway which is meant to look
old.
The slate is part of a collection she bought from the demolished roof of a plantation kitchen house in Bluffton. Each slat is laid out haphazardly around her steps and across her yard where gray cement seals them together—remnants that once covered a cook's head two centuries ago.

As a hot flash starts in the pit of her arms, she realizes she would have nothing—no past, no history, no identity whatsoever—if she wasn't adept at taking hold of what scraps she could get her hands on and piecing them together in the guise of a whole. Not unlike a buzzard, she must admit, as she scans the skyline for the old opportunist. That one whose survival depends on the picking apart of a former life.

THREE

Ray

Ray loads the back of her Volvo station wagon for her trip to Kitty B.'s: four pounds of birdseed, five rolls of tulle, pink satin ribbons, and a pot of creamed corn for LeMar, whose migraines are back for the third time this year. He was diagnosed a decade ago with chronic fatigue syndrome after an awful bout with the flu, and he hasn't been back to work at Sally Swine since. He'll be headed straight for another evaluation at the Medical University in Charleston after he sings the “Ave Maria” at Little Hilda's wedding.

“This is Senator Montgomery's house.” Ray hears the loud, raspy voice and turns to see Vangie Dreggs on a golf cart, of all things, toting a sporty looking middle-aged couple down Third Street. Ray watches as Vangie pulls onto her slate driveway. She's got that stout little Jack Russell in a basket on the backseat, and on the hood of her cart a magnetic advertisement reads, “Lone Star Lowcountry Realty” with a star-shaped photo of Vangie and her dog above her phone number and her Web site.
Tacky.

“Let me introduce y'all to the first lady of Jasper,” Vangie says to the couple. She turns back and gives Ray that big Texas smile, and Ray swears she's seen horse's teeth smaller than Vangie's. “Hi there, Ray.” Vangie's dog leaps out and starts sniffing around Ray's ankles. “Getting everything just right for the Prescott wedding?”

Ray takes off her sunglasses and walks toward them. “Hello, Vangie.” She reaches out her hand to the strangers. “I'm Ray Montgomery.”

Vangie stands up and straightens out her bright skirt and introduces the couple. “This is Tom and Janine Patterson from Toledo, Ohio.” The little dog makes a dart into the side yard, where he sniffs around Tuxedo's pen.

“Pleased to meet y'all,” Ray says as Tom Patterson squeezes her hand more tightly than necessary. Janine does the same and Vangie slaps Ray on the back and says, “Tom and Janine are in the market for a second home, and they're more interested in a small town than something along the beach—so here we are.”

The print on Vangie's skirt sways with her wide hips. It's hot pink with monkeys climbing from limb to limb drinking out of martini glasses.

“Have you shown them those new condominiums on the Cumbahee?” Ray says.

“Why, yes I have.” Vangie swats her glossy nails in their direction as the gold bangles on her wrist clamor together. “But they're more interested in old homes and a small-town flavor, so I'm taking them down to the end of Third Street to see the old Mims home.”

“Sis's mama has put her house on the market?” Ray can't help but wince.

“Well, yes, Ray. She's been living at that Episcopal Retirement Community for two years now.”

“Oh, I
know
, but I always thought—”

The dog runs back and scrapes his muddy paws on Mr. Patterson's khaki pants. “Down, Little Bit!” Vangie snaps. She picks him up and apologizes, and Ray decides not to finish her sentence. But what she always thought was that Mrs. Mims would leave the house to Sis, who would move out of her apartment on Main and be closer to her and Hilda, who lives just around the corner.

Mr. Patterson beats the dirt off his pants, and Mrs. Patterson smiles sincerely at Ray. “Jasper sure is quaint.”

Before Ray forms a response, Vangie Dreggs collects Little Bit and her clients, pulls out of Ray's driveway, and turns toward Sis's childhood home down the block.

“See you later, First Lady,” she says as Ray curls her slender fingers into tight fists. “By the way, we've got to meet about the Healing Prayer Revival Day before the next vestry meeting. The Reverend says he needs you to get behind it!” Vangie turns to the Pattersons and points to Ray. “She's the senior warden of that beautiful old Episcopal church on the corner. It's a little behind the times, but we're catching up, right, Ray?”

Ray shakes her head. Healing prayer? The Mims home going as a second residence to a couple from Toledo? Just the thought of it all makes another knot form in her gut, and she feels like she's been punched in the stomach by Vangie Dreggs in her hot pink drunken monkey skirt. As Ray slips into her car, she realizes Vangie is more than just a come-yuh or a Lone-Star nuisance. She doesn't think she's overreacting to say that Vangie poses a downright threat to the protection and preservation of the town Ray loves, and she is not above planning a scheme to run her horse-toothed fanny out.

It's a twenty-five mile drive from Jasper to Kitty B.'s house at the tip of Cottage Island, where Ray will squeeze chronically infirm LeMar's hand and lead the final planning meeting for the wedding that will be here in four short days. She let Big Hilda, the mother of the bride, off the hook tonight since her contribution of addressing the invitations and altering the wedding gown are done, and they all know she'll be lucky to make it through the week without falling apart or retreating behind the wrought iron gates of her overgrown fortress where the thick vines of the Lady Banksia roses curl over her garden walls like the barbed wires at the top of the Beaufort County Detention Center.

Angus finally called it quits on Hilda three years ago on the grounds that she had become positively impossible to live with, much less love. She took it so bad that she didn't leave her house for nearly two years, and the gals had to sneak in on the heels of their mutual housekeeper, Richadene, after the first few months to make sure she was still alive
.

~MARCH 4, 2004 ~

Hilda stood at her front door, gathering the nerve to step out and over her property line. It had been twenty months since Angus walked out.

“It's time,” Ray said as she patted Hilda's back. “You've got to do this.”

Hilda looked pale, but she was dressed to the nines in a creamy silk pantsuit she'd ordered over the telephone from Doncaster. Her frosted hair was molded into a shoulder-length bob with what appeared to be one enormous under curl that circled her neck like a brace.

Ray cleared her throat, and Hilda nodded once and reached out her thin arms. Kitty B. took hold of her left hand and Sis took hold of her right, and Ray swatted a broom at the spiderwebs at the front door and the voracious fig vines that were all but taking over across the threshold and around the porch columns.

When Hilda stepped out onto the sidewalk, the light of Third Street hitting her square on the face, she raised her bejeweled wrist to her forehead and said, “What I really want is an oyster po' boy from Opal Dowdy's.”