Coming Attractions

by Robin Jones Gunn

“I know. I feel the same way. All year, Julia, more than with the inheritance stuff, you’ve been there for me at just the right times.”

  “And now I want you to be there for me.”

  “You got it. Like I said. I’d be honored to be your woman of honor.”

  “Good. I like that: woman of honor instead of maid of honor.”

  “I know, huh? That’s a much better title. Let’s start a revolution and change that out-of- date term. Who wants to be a maid? It always makes me think of the Christmas song with the ‘eight maids a-milking.’ Seriously, who needs that image in her head at a wedding?”

  “I had never thought that before, but thanks for planting the image in my head. I’m sure it will stay with me now whenever I hear the term maid of honor.”

  “Not if we’re successful in our mission to retrain brides everywhere to call their first attendant her ‘woman of honor.’ Or even ‘best woman.’ Why not? The groom gets to call his wingman his best man. Why can’t the bride have a best woman?”

  “I like the term woman of honor. That’s what I now officially label your role in our wedding. So it’s a definite yes, then?”

  “Yes. Definitely, yes! I am your woman of honor.” Katie gave a little half-bow. “Bring on the details.”

  “Okay. First, I’d better ask you, what have you decided you’ll do after you graduate?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Find a job somewhere doing something. I thought I would see if I could move into Rick and Eli’s apartment.”

  Julia looked surprised. “With the two of them?”

  “No. Rick is planning to move to Redlands. I don’t know when Eli’s leaving, but when he goes back to Nairobi, I’m guessing that would leave their apartment open.”

  “But Eli isn’t going back to Kenya until after our wedding.”

  Katie wasn’t sure why Julia knew that little detail, but it didn’t seem important to pursue.

  “When is the wedding?” Katie asked.

  “The week after graduation. Didn’t I tell you that yet?”

  “Maybe, but I might have forgotten. Homework overload. Wow, that’s fast.”

  “I know. When John and I decided we wanted to get married on upper campus, we had to go with one of the few remaining open dates. Ever since Christy and Todd held their wedding in the meadow last year, it’s become a popular location for lots of Rancho students, past and present. They really started something.”

  “Don’t let her aunt Marti hear you say that. She’ll want a cut of the profit from all the events held there. She was the one who went all out with the setup, the caterers, and the flowers.”

  “Our wedding won’t be that elaborate. And it won’t be that large, either. We’re trying to keep it to about fifty people. Seventy-five at the most.”

  “That is small.”

  “We realized we both know a lot of people. It could practically be an all-school event, if we opened it up. We decided we wanted just family and close friends. Since John and Patricia never had children, it’s not as if we need to be sensitive to blending our extended families.”

  “Will the reception be there too, in the meadow?”

  “Yes. It’s going to be simple. Cake and punch. A friend of mine is providing the cake as a gift to us. Did Nicole tell you she’s doing the flowers?”

  “She did. I’m sure she’ll make it beyond beautiful for you guys. She’s so gifted that way. What about your dress?”

  “I’m going to wear my sister’s wedding dress. She’s sending it to me.”

  “Is she coming to the wedding?”

  “No, she’s in her third trimester of a difficult pregnancy, and the doctor said she couldn’t fly. We talked about postponing the wedding until after the baby comes and both of them are able to travel. But then it would be well into September, and John would be back in classes.”

  “Are you okay with your sister’s not being there?”

  Julia nodded. “She was the one who urged us to go ahead and get married.”

  “Well, tell me what you need me to do, and when you need it done, and I’ll be all over it.”

  “I’m working on a list. If you have time now, we could go over some of the details.”

  “Sure. But wait. Aren’t you supposed to give me my year-end review?”

  “Oh, right. Katie, you’ve done a good job this year. Keep it up for these final weeks.”

  “Okay.”

  “Any particular problems?”

  “Just the usual.”

  “Okay. Good. End of review.”

  The two of them laughed. Julia went over to a little desk that fit nicely in the corner of her apartment and pulled out a big binder.

  “Whoa! I thought you said it was going to be a simple wedding.”

  “This is simple. Everything is right here. This is my brain. If I lose this, I’m sunk.” As Julia put the book down on the coffee table, a business card fluttered out and landed on Katie’s shoe.

  She picked it up and read the front of the card. “ ‘Animals R Us?’ What kind of a wedding are you guys having? Did you forget to tell me about the Noah’s ark theme?”

  Julia looked at the card. “Oh. That was one of John’s ideas. We crossed that off the list awhile ago.”

  “What? Two-by-two giraffes coming down the aisle instead of flower girls? A zebra for a ring bearer?”

  “No, doves. Lots of doves. John wanted to have them released at the end. You probably remember from having taken his Bible class that he’s big on doves’ symbolism in Scripture.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The dove that was released from the ark and flew back with the olive branch showing that the floodwaters had receded.”

  “And the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove coming down at the baptism of Christ,” Julia added. “Also the two doves being the poor man’s sacrifice that Mary and Joseph offered in the temple right after Christ was born.”

  “What exactly did Dr. Ambrose want the doves to symbolize at your wedding?”

  “Our uniting as one in peace now that the waters of all our painful years have receded. The presence of God’s Spirit. Offering ourselves as set apart to God. He had a few other dove connections, but I don’t remember now what they were.”

  “I think it’s a beautiful addition to your wedding. Why don’t you do it? I wanted Christy to release hundreds of butterflies at her wedding. I had a hard time finding a place that would sell enough butterflies for her to do it. Does this company rent the doves, or do you have to buy them?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t pursue it. I think the man who runs Animals R Us was a former student of John’s, and he now trains animals for TV and film. You can throw away the card. Do you want something to drink?”

  “Sure. Just water.”

  As Julia went into her small kitchenette for the water, Katie tucked the card into her pocket. She had a plan.

  Before the day was out, Katie had made a strategic phone call to Animals R Us. The quote she received on the cost of one hundred doves was astronomical. She had to buy them since, unlike homing pigeons, these doves weren’t trained to return to their cages. The cages and delivery costs were almost as much as the cost of the birds. So much for that idea.

  Then, while working on her ridiculously overdue final project the next night, a brilliant thought came to her. Julia and her beloved didn’t need one hundred doves. Only one.

  Dashing down to Nicole’s room, she found her friend already in bed.

  “Hey, wake up. It’s only eleven-thirty. What are you doing?”

  “Sleeping. You really should try it some time.” Nicole turned on the light next to her bed, squinting at Katie.

  “This is the best idea ever. I couldn’t wait till morning to tell you.”

  “Katie, I thought something was wrong!”

  “No, something is right. Or at least it is going to be right. Beautifully right.” Katie launched into a rundown of how Dr. Ambrose wanted doves at the wedding and Julia had said to throw away the card, but Kat
ie had called for information.

  “Here’s my stroke of genius. When you design the flowers, you can make my bouquet so that it has a hidden cage big enough for one dove.”

  “Katie…”

  “No, listen, it’s perfect. I’m not talking about a bunch of doves. Just a single dove. This will be my surprise for them. I’ll release it from the bouquet right after they say ‘I do.’ Or after they kiss. Or maybe right before they go down the aisle. It will be perfect! Don’t you see? Dr. Ambrose will love it. The single dove symbolizes, when Julia came down the aisle, that she and Dr. Ambrose were two separate people with two hearts. The mystery of marriage is that the two become one. One dove. One heart. United as one. Don’t you love it?”

  “Actually…” Nicole was sitting up now and had stopped blinking in the bright light. “I do love it. What a great idea, Katie.”

  “Told you it couldn’t wait till morning.”

  “I don’t think it would be that difficult to incorporate a small cage in the center of the bouquet. As long as the dove is a magician’s sort of dove that doesn’t mind being confined to a small space.”

  “We’ll ask for a nonclaustrophobic dove. How will that be?”

  “You’ll have to have a big bouquet. That’s fine because Julia’s bouquet is going to be big too. She left it up to me to decide on your bouquet, so she probably wouldn’t question what I design for you. How fun!”

  “I know. Dr. Ambrose will love it.”

  Katie and Nicole sat together on her bed for the next hour going over Julia’s wedding plans.

  “I could use some help shopping for my woman of honor dress too. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.”

  “What style or color does Julia want you to wear?”

  “She said it’s up to me since I don’t have to match anyone else. I was thinking of going with basic black. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a good way to go. We should be able to find something stunning for you. When do you have time to go shopping?”

  The two of them figured out when they had open time on their calendars and then moved on to graduation party plans.

  “I sent my invitations last Monday,” Katie said.

  “So did I. I have extras, if you need any more.”

  “No, I have a lot of extras too.”

  “You sent one to your parents, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I doubt they’ll come. I didn’t order graduation announcements or anything, so the party invitation served double duty for me. At least my parents will know that I graduated. That is, if I finish everything in the next few weeks.”

  “I hope your parents come, Katie. You said things were a little better with them at Christmas.”

  “Yeah, Rick and I went down late on Christmas day. I told you that, didn’t I? We took them some presents. My mom made some soup, which is about as fancy as my parents ever get now with food. Our time with them was okay. Not jolly but okay. We were there for a total of about two hours. My dad thanked us for coming to see them, so I think it was worth it.”

  “Maybe he’ll think it’s worth it to come up for your graduation.”

  “Maybe.”

  Nicole yawned and politely covered her mouth.

  “I should let you sleep,” Katie said, getting up. “Thanks for listening. I’m glad you like my idea.”

  “You buy the dove, and I’ll design the bouquet with the hidden cage.”

  Katie trotted down the hall to her room, stopping to talk to two other night owls who were still up, roaming the hall in their pjs. Katie recognized their spacey, stress-incited looks. She encouraged both of them by saying they would make it through the semester. “Get extra vitamin C in you whenever you can.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” one of the women said with a grin.

  “Your immune system will thank me for this.”

  When she returned to her room, she took her own advice and went looking for her supply of vitamin C. Taking three of the chewable tablets, she plugged in her hot pot. She wasn’t particularly interested in tea, but a box of instant Thai noodles sounded good. Within six minutes she was back at her laptop. The steaming bowl of noodles wafted their spicy fragrance like a blessing over her middle-of-the-night study session.

  “This is going to happen, isn’t it? I’m going to finish this tonight at long last. I’m going make it through finals, and I’m going to graduate.” She slowly sipped the noodle broth, feeling warmed inside her belly as well as inside her spirit.

  Taped to the wall beside her desk were five cards on which she had written some of her favorite verses. Her glance landed on a verse she had written out over a year and a half ago, when she and Christy were roommates. She had fixed her thoughts on that verse before she started going out with Rick.

  Psalm 138:8 — The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

  “I believe you did that, Lord. You still are fulfilling your purposes for me.”

  The verse on the card next to that one was from Exodus 20:24:

  Build altars in the places where I remind you who I am, and I will come and bless you there.

  She remembered that she had come across that verse last August during the RA retreat on Catalina Island. In response, as her own unconventional act of worship, Katie had built a small altar and dedicated the coming year to the Lord.

  Reaching for a third card, she pulled it off the wall and smiled. This one, from Psalms, was the verse some women from her floor had selected especially for Katie for the year. It also was written out next to her photo in a collage that had been up on their wall since the beginning of the school year. Katie had walked past that wall so many times and had read all the verses by the photos so often that she had become immune to “her” verse.

  The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.

  “You did that too. You guarded and blessed all my months of going out with Rick.”

  Katie knew it was extraordinary to feel so at peace about how everything had turned out with Rick. “You blessed my going out, and now I believe you’re going to bless my coming in. Coming into what? Coming in for a landing on this long flight called the College Express. All I ask, Lord, is for a safe landing. After that… what? What do you want me to do?”

  Katie pulled a blank index card from a stack on her desk and wrote a note to herself. All school year she had been making up mental notes to herself. It seemed fitting that she at long last should write out one of those notes with real paper and ink.

  Surprisingly, the note ended up not being written as if she were the one doing the speaking. She didn’t plan to, but she wrote it as if God were writing it to her.

  Dear Katie, I have it all figured out. Keep trusting me and stay tuned for coming attractions. Don’t forget: You too are a victim of my grace.

  Love, God.

  20

  The day before Katie’s graduation, her cell phone rang at 3:05 a.m. At first she thought she had set her alarm and tried to turn off that feature on her phone. When her phone kept buzzing, her eyes adjusted to the glow of the screen, and she saw that Eli was calling.

  “Eli, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “I’m good. Do you want to do something a little crazy to celebrate that we’re about to graduate from college?”

  “Crazy? Eli, I think it’s crazy that you’re calling me at three o’clock in the morning on a day that I could have slept till noon if I wanted!”

  “You can sleep all you want next week. Come with me. I’m going to watch the sunrise.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the mountains.”

  “It will take two hours to get there.” Katie was sitting up now and wrapping her mind around the spontaneous idea.

  “Which is why we need to leave right now if we’re going to catch the first light. Are you in?”

  Katie hesitated only a moment. “Yeah. Why not? I’ll go with you.” Even though she was responding calmly, Katie felt her spi
rit stir with anticipation. After all the pressure of the past few weeks, this was like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  She was the one who usually suggested outlandish adventures to her friends, so it felt good to have someone else invite her to a crazy outing in the middle of the night.

  “Where do you want me to meet you?”

  “I’ll come over to Crown Hall and meet you out front.”

  With a blast of energy, Katie was up and pulling on warm clothes. By the time she stepped out of the lobby and into the dark chill, Eli was climbing out of the campus security cart.

  “Tell me we’re not driving that clown-mobile anywhere.” Katie pulled a beanie cap from her shoulder bag and tugged it over her head.

  “No, I just got off duty. I was hoping you would drive. I still haven’t gone for a ride in your new car. Or should I say in ‘Clover.’ ”

  “Yes, my little green Clover. Sure, I’ll drive. I think Clover is up for an adventure too.” Katie fished around for her keys and fell into stride with Eli. They walked to her car in steady measure and got in. Katie started the engine and backed up.

  “Do you know where we’re going? Big Bear? Lake Arrowhead?” she asked.

  One of the things students from other states loved about Rancho Corona University was its location. A person could drive an hour west and be at the beach, an hour southeast and be in the desert, or two hours northeast and be in the mountains.

  “I printed a map,” Eli said. “Have you been to Crestline or Rim of the World before?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “One of the guys I work with used to live there. He said to go to a place called Strawberry Peak Fire Lookout. The map says it takes an hour and fifty-five minutes from here.”

  “I’ve never heard of Strawberry Peak Lookout. But I’ve been sledding at Big Bear. Or maybe it was Lake Arrowhead. Anyway, how about if I get us on the freeway, and you tell me where to go from there?”

  “Sounds good. Thanks for coming with me, Katie.”

  She glanced at him and offered a contented smile. “Thanks for asking me to go. I do love an adventure.”