An adult brain would have seen Garth’s behavior as possessive, manipulative, and controlling. My eighteen-year-old heart saw it as loving and adoring. I reveled in his adoration. I wallowed in it. I ate it up. My friends envied my having landed one of the handsomest, most popular guys on campus, and I felt sorry that they did not have someone who adored them the way Garth did me.
In February of that year, Garth accompanied me on one of my mandatory weekend family visits. By that time my family was just as smitten with him as I was. Oops would get so shy around him and blush every time he spoke to her. Ma’am thought he was just dahlin’ and laughed at everything he said. Even The Colonel liked him, calling him a fine boy, fine boy. During that February visit Garth asked my father if he could have my hand in marriage.
Colonel Tom is a firm believer that men need to take care of their women because, of course, they are incapable of taking care of themselves. So when Garth asked for my hand in marriage, Colonel Tom started assessing Garth’s ability to take care of Baby Girl. Garth was an only child of a well-to-do dentist, and Garth, himself, had the potential to be a well-to-do dentist. So Colonel Tom figured that well-to-do dentist squared could probably take pretty good care of Baby Girl.
So, without even consulting me, Colonel Tom and well-to-do-dentist-to-be decided that Baby Girl would quit college after her freshman year—since taken-care-of women don’t need no book learnin’—marry well-to-do-dentist-to-be and follow him to dental school, which was, by the way, right there on the University campus, still under Colonel Tom’s nose.
And Colonel Tom also told well-to-do-dentist-to-be that he’d be glad to share my name with him. From that day forward, Garth would call me Baby Girl.
Mayday! Mayday! And still I paid no attention.
Twenty-four
Once it had been decided that I would be marrying Garth, we leapt into a flurry of wedding-planning activities. My schoolwork suffered, but my parents didn’t care. Their Baby Girl was marrying Dr. To Be, and she didn’t need more book learning anyway.
Garth was just a student and didn’t have money for an engagement ring, and since his mother was still wearing the family heirloom ring, I went diamondless. I had no flashy proof of an engagement; folks just had to take my word for it. We’d wear simple gold bands when the official time came. But, for now, I was an engaged-to-be-wed woman!
Of course, The Colonel took charge, coordinating the entire wedding affair. Since Ma’am’s father, Jim Daddy, had been her official wedding planner, I guess Ma’am felt it was natural that Colonel Tom should take over. He booked the church as if he had been a long-time congregant, drew up the guest list, and hired the caterer.
But I put my foot down when The Colonel began describing my wedding gown of ribbons and bows and ruffles and lace and puffed sleeves and trains. I flung one of my rare tantrums and said the whole thing would be off unless Mamie Worsham could make my dress.
Taken aback by my screaming fit and fearing I really meant I wouldn’t marry Dr. Wonderful if I didn’t get my way, The Colonel said, “Okay, okay, sure thing, Baby Girl. Calm down.”
After Percy and Vickie’s marriage Colonel Tom had refused to meet Vickie’s mother until Lydia’s christening brought us all together. It’s amazing the effect a baby can have on a group of obstinate people. But The Colonel was taken with Mamie right from the get-go. I’m certain it was the vanilla-pillow hug that did it. So The Colonel was happy to have Mamie make my wedding gown.
I ordered a dress identical to Vickie’s, and when The Colonel saw it, he was speechless. He said that it was exactly what he had had in mind for his Baby Girl. I also didn’t want a big poufy veil, so Mamie covered a headband with handmade white silk rosebuds—a perfect adornment for my shoulder-length hair.
I asked Oops, Vickie, Suzanne, and Mary Sue to be my attendants. Mamie made their dresses, as well. They were similar to the dress I had worn for Vickie and Percy’s wedding, except I chose yellow, my favorite color. The attendants would carry sprays of white daisies with yellow centers, tied with big yellow ribbons.
The women from our church hosted a tea in my honor, while Ma’am’s bridge club had a luncheon for me. Our neighbors threw a miscellaneous bridal shower, and Suzanne and Mary Sue hosted a lingerie shower, inviting all of our high school friends. Percy showed up at the lingerie shower and provided the entertainment for the evening,the entertainment being his charming presence. Even though Percy was off the dating market, my friends still hung on his every word and giggled at everything he said. The girls gave me push-up bras, see-through nighties, crotchless panties. Percy gave me a prayer book.
When I opened it, I was so touched until Percy bellowed, “Gotta keep it clean, Ladies!”
I planned to carry Percy’s prayer book in my wedding, topped with a small bouquet of gardenias, his and my favorite flower. Gardenias reminded us of the years we were stationed in North Carolina with The Colonel and of Ma’am’s childhood home in Wilson.
Though Garth had taken me to his home to meet his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Brooks had yet to meet Ma’am and The Colonel. It was during the pre-wedding flurry that Colonel Tom invited the Brookses to our home for a back-yard cookout. He was going to impress them with his huge grilling contraption and his meat art. Ma’am had mastered the baking of potatoes and tossing of lettuce, so we had ourselves a party in the making.
Since Colonel Tom had specified that it be a back-yard party, Ma’am wore a perfectly adorable red checked halter dress with a circular skirt and red canvas espadrilles tied around her shapely little ankles. The Colonel wore his casual short-sleeved uniform.
The Brookses lived just fifty miles away from Waynesville, but backyard cookouts in their town must have been more formal affairs than they were in Waynesville. Mrs. Brooks showed up looking like an opera singer who had just wandered off the stage and into my parents’ yard. She was a large-boned woman, cinched into a long black jacket dress, with her ample bosom pushed up to her chin. She had jet black obviously-out-of-a-bottle hair sprayed into a perfect helmet. Her pocketbook hung from the crook in her arm, Queen Elizabeth style, and she had her perfectly-manicured hands woven over her large bosom. I generally refer to them as boobs, but Mrs. Brooks did not have boobs. She had a bosom. Dr. Brooks followed her in his dark suit, starched white shirt, plaid bow tie, and blindingly-polished wing-tipped shoes.
The Colonel bellowed his characteristic welcome, clapped the Brookses on their backs, and said, “What’s your poison? Bourbon? Gin? Or maybe just a good old beer?”
And Mrs. Brooks answered, “Nothing for us, thank you. We don’t touch alcohol.” And if memory serves me, she added “devil’s brew” to her drink refusal.
That sound you hear is a party coming to a grinding halt.
There was a look of terror on Ma’am and The Colonel’s faces. To my parents entertaining meant massive amounts of alcohol. Everything else was just trimming.
While everyone was standing there staring at one other, trying to decide how to throw a party without alcohol, I ran to the kitchen, remembering that Ma’am had a giant jar of powdery instant tea. I grabbed Ma’am’s cut glass pitcher from the dining room china cabinet, dumped in the powder, and filled the pitcher to the brim with water. We had lots of crushed ice, naturally, so I filled the glasses with ice, poured the instant tea, and crammed a lemon wedge on the rim of each glass. I set the filled glasses and the pitcher with the remaining tea and some cocktail napkins on a big silver tray and stuck a sprig of mint into each glass. I returned to the living room where everyone was still standing in silence. When they saw me coming, bringing tea, they all broke into smiles and approving murmurs, as if I were bearing the Messiah.
We drank our tea in silence, except for an occasional mmmm mmmm, until Colonel Tom suggested we adjourn to the back yard where the meat art was underway.
Just as we exited the back door, the aroma of The Colonel’s roast pork greeted us. The smell of meat on a back-yard barbecue is always cause for conversation—well,
conversation among the Albemarles. All of us started jabbering at once about the aroma, Colonel Tom’s talent, the size of the grilling contraption. Garth’s parents stood side-by-side, expressionless and conversationless.
Ma’am said that we should sit, kick off our shoes, and relax. We all moved to lawn chairs, while still the only sound we heard was the scraping of Mrs. Brooks’s stockings as she crossed the patio to take a seat.
Once we were all relaxing, with our shoes still intact, The Colonel took over. He stood by his grill, spatula and tongs in hand, entertaining the crowd with his outlandish stories. Everyone, except the Brookses, had heard the tales on numerous occasions, but we still found them amusing. But Garth’s parents registered no reaction at all—no laughter, no surprise, no recognition that they were even being entertained with my father’s stories. But The Colonel just kept on trying.
Mrs. Brooks said absolutely nothing, while, occasionally, Dr. Brooks would mutter, “I see” or “Um hum.”
When it was apparent that was all he was going to get out of them, Colonel Tom would pick up where he had left off and keep on going. Every once in a while I would try to help out, but each time I opened my mouth, Mrs. Brooks shot me an icy glance that caused me to cut myself off mid-sentence.
When The Colonel announced that the meat art was complete, we—the Albemarles—applauded. Ma’am jumped up and excused herself to get the potatoes and salad. All of the girls—Vickie, Oops, and I—followed her into the kitchen because it takes four people to carry potatoes and salad. We were so rude to have left Mrs. Brooks alone with all of the men, but, at that point, we were no longer consulting Emily Post.
Ma’am and The Colonel’s dinner parties usually went on for hours, with numerous interruptions for drink refills. There was normally lots of laughter, tall-tale telling, and one-upping until all the food and all the alcohol were gone. This particular dinner party lasted twenty, twenty-five minutes, tops. We ate in silence and acted as though we were having our last meal before our execution. I would have welcomed execution at that point.
And, all the while, my Garth—my talkative, amusing Garth—was acting just like his parents, except he was wearing that smile, that beautiful, sexy smile that had made me fall in love with him.
When you grow up in a turbulent household, you learn to make excuses for the people you love—or the people you are told you are supposed to love. The Brookses were shy. Garth was nervous about this first meeting.
Once we had polished off the meat art and potatoes (and, by the way, Ma’am’s potatoes were baked to perfection. We never knew from one meal to the next how they would turn out.), Ma’am said, “Time for a little dessert.”
Once again, all the girls followed Ma’am into the kitchen because it takes four people to carry dessert for nine.
Ma’am had discovered a delicious lemon confection in a local bakery and was serving it to our guests. She spooned it into her family’s antique crystal goblets and topped each serving with a dollop of whipped cream (well, Cool Whip). We returned to the table and placed the goblets in front of our guests to no reaction whatsoever.
We each took a taste.
Mrs. Brooks said, “Mmmm.”
Dr. Brooks said, “Delicious.”
And Colonel Tom was off and running: “Yes, it is delicious. Ma’am is well known in these parts for her delectable dessert creations. I have encouraged her to go into the catering business or, in the least, to open her own dessert shop. She’s so modest, though, she says she wants only to share her talents with her family. I told her that she should, perhaps, write a cook boo…”
It was at this point that Ma’am kicked The Colonel under the table. You could tell that she had kicked him by the way he abruptly ended his sentence, jolted, and ummphed all at the same time. You could also tell Ma’am had kicked him by the way she squinched up her eyes and pursed her lips. And Colonel Tom went right back to eating his dessert, like nothing at all had happened.
Ma’am and Colonel’s parties usually broke up around midnight, but at 8:30 Dr. Brooks said, “We’d best be getting back to our motel. Mother and I have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow,” (They lived fifty miles away!) “and we need our rest. Son, would you please chauffer us?”
We had those folks ushered to the front door before Mrs. Brooks could get her pocketbook situated in the crook of her arm. As Dr. and Mrs. Brooks left, they did say thank you to my parents, which was more than I was expecting at that point. Garth shook my father’s hand and pecked me on the cheek before herding his parents out to their car.
Once Colonel Tom closed the door, we all just stared numbly after them in silence and disbelief.
After a minute or so had passed, The Colonel turned, grinned, and said, “I think that went right well, don’t you?” and made a bee-line for the liquor cabinet.
Twenty-five
I awoke on my wedding day with a crick in my neck, from sleeping on orange juice cans. But I wanted the perfect curve to my flip for my wedding, and the only way to achieve that flip was to roll my hair on orange juice cans. A crick in the neck I could handle; an imperfect flip I could not.
When I finally emerged from my bedroom and went downstairs, I found Ma’am preparing to leave for her appointment with her hairdresser. She asked me for the twelfth time if I was sure I didn’t want to have my hair professionally styled, and for the twelfth time I assured her than I did not want curls and tendrils and an upsweep. I wanted my simple flip held out of my eyes with Mamie’s head band. She shrugged her shoulders, rolled her eyes, and headed for the door.
I wandered into the kitchen where I found Oops eating Lucky Charms and reading the newspaper. She was the only thirteen year old I’d ever known who actually read the entire newspaper, not just the funnies.
I poured myself a bowl of her Lucky Charms and joined her at the table.
Oops looked up from the financial section and said, “How can you eat on your wedding day?”
And I answered, “Hungry, I guess.”
She handed me the funnies, and we read and ate in silence.
After I had eaten all my cereal and held the bowl of pink milk to my lips, I put the bowl and spoon in the sink and wandered out to the back yard in my pajamas and bare feet. There I found The Colonel sitting in a lawn chair, drinking a Bloody Mary, staring at something off in the distance.
I pulled a chair close and let my eyes follow his line of sight. I didn’t see anything out there worth staring at and decided that he must have been staring at his own thoughts.
After a while he said, “Today’s the big day, Baby Girl.”
I said, “Yep.”
He asked, “Scared?”
I asked back, “Should I be?”
He said, “Don’t believe so. You got you a good one.”
I said, “You should know. You picked him.”
He didn’t say anything else, so after a stretch of silence, I just got up and wandered on back in the house.
I was expecting my wedding day to feel different from other days, but it didn’t. I had imagined sparkles and bubbles and bustling and giggling and everyone making a fuss over me. But Ma’am was gone, The Colonel was deep in his own thoughts, and Oops was planning her financial future.
So I went upstairs and shaved my legs. It seemed like something a bride was supposed to do in preparation for her wedding. Once my legs were as smooth as silk, I had just eight hours to kill before my wedding. My dress was hanging on the back of my closet door; my linen shoes, hankie, and head band were on my dresser. I sat on my bed and stared at my finery until I had only seven and a half hours to kill before my wedding.
I walked over to the dresser and picked up the little red velvet box. I clicked it open and stared at the sparkling, emerald-cut diamond pendant necklace. I wanted it to be from Garth, but it wasn’t. It was a gift from my father. Colonel Tom was none too pleased that Garth had not given the Baby Girl a diamond engagement ring, but I told him that Garth just couldn’t afford a diamond while he
was still a student. I also assured him that once Garth was settled in his dental practice, Baby Girl would have a diamond that would blind The Colonel. But he couldn’t stand the thought of my walking down the aisle diamondless. So on the eve of my wedding, when we were alone, my father handed me the little red velvet box tied with a white satin ribbon. He said nothing but gave me a self-conscious hug. I cried—not for the diamond necklace but for the hug. It was my first—and it would be my last.
Percy came over around noon and helped me pass some time. We locked ourselves in my bedroom and played a game of Cuss Scrabble. We laughed our assess off when Percy spelled peepee and I spelled poophead. When it comes to Cuss Scrabble, we’ll never grow up.
We were still laughing and reminiscing when Suzanne and Mary Sue banged on my bedroom door and declared that it was time for the wedding bitches to get all pretty. Vickie soon followed with Lydia. As Vickie and Percy passed on the stairs, Vickie handed Lydia over to Percy, as if they were running a well-coordinated relay race and Lydia was their baton.
Once Suzanne, Mary Sue, and Vickie were gathered in my bedroom, I stuck my head out the door and yelled, “Oops, if you want to be a bridesmaid, you’d better get your ass in here right now!”
In thirty seconds she appeared in the doorway, yellow dress and shoes in hand and an enormous grin on her face. I don’t think she was expecting to be included in the big girls’ circle. She was a bit standoffish and was more observer than participant, but I could tell that she was delighted to be a part of the attendants’ preparation.
Suzanne said, “You gotta have something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”
I assured her that I had them. They all wanted to know what they were, where I’d gotten them. I told them I’d tell them all, in due time, but not right now. They began to protest, but I told them to leave me alone.
We were putting the finishing touches on our hair and make-up and Suzanne was still bugging me about my something old, something new when Ma’am tapped on the door and told us it was time for us to leave for the church.
Getting the Important Things Right Page 11