Cancel the Wedding

by Carolyn T. Dingman

  I grabbed the phone from Logan and did a cursory check of my clothing making sure that everything was securely fastened in its upright and fully locked position.

  “Hi, Gigi.” I sounded winded. “What’s up?”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Saying good-night to Elliott.”

  “You do remember that you’re chaperoning my daughter, right?”

  I know, and she’s making a damn fine human chastity belt if you don’t mind me saying. “Lo’s fine. I’m fine. Our virtues are intact.”

  Georgia made a noise into the phone that sounded like she doubted my statement. Rude.

  She said, “I’m coming down there the day after tomorrow.”

  “What? No, wait. We got all of these letters today from the cemetery. I don’t even know what they mean.”

  “Livie, it’s time.”

  I felt slightly deflated. “I’m not quite ready for that yet. To spread the ashes, I mean. There are some new things, and I haven’t figured it all out yet.”

  “Figured what out, Liv? She was married before. He died. This thing’s over. You need to bury Mom and come home.”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  “You’ve been gone for over a month! I miss Logan. I’m tired of lying to Leo. You need to finish this thing and come home.”

  She sounded tired and angry. I didn’t really know what to say to her. When I thought of leaving this place, and Elliott, it made me feel lost. Homesick. I felt like being anywhere but here, here with him, would make it hard for me to breathe. I said quietly and with very little conviction, “It’ll be good to see you. I’m glad you’re coming. We’ll talk when you get here.” Then I hung up the phone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Elliott showed up for breakfast the next morning with the surprise he had promised. I didn’t mention that Georgia would be driving down the next day. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean and I certainly didn’t want Elliott to have to worry about it. The surprise was a good one; it turned out to be yearbooks. He and Bitsy, the librarian, had managed to dig up the yearbooks from eight out of twelve years of my mother’s school career. I devoured them over breakfast.

  My favorite picture of my mom was when she was in the third grade. She was standing in the front row of her small class and she had a huge grin on her face exposing the gap where two of her front teeth had been. I found Florence standing next to the teacher. George and Oliver were standing in the back row. George looked neatly pressed; Oliver looked recently beaten.

  When I looked at the yearbook from her senior year it seemed to me as if every image of Janie and George held a secret. I stared at the pixelated images of their eyes to see if they held any hints of what was to come. That they would be getting married in two short years. That he would be dead too soon after that.

  I had marked all of the pages that held pictures of them or any mention of my mother. I flipped again to the formal senior portrait of Janie. It was still strange to see images of her so young. I had never realized how much Georgia and I resembled her until we got our hands on these pictures from her youth.

  I looked at Elliott as he finished his coffee. “Thank you for finding these. You’re amazing.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I am. I’m also late.” He cleared his breakfast dishes. “Does Logan need a ride to work?”

  “No, she’s off today. I am going to wash my hair, again.” My fingers ran over the area of stitches and the stiff surrounding hair. “Then I think we’re going shopping. Will you come back after work?” I thought, We need to talk.

  “Of course. Do you want me to bring dinner?”

  “No, I actually have some stuff to cook.”

  He feigned surprise. “She’s cooking?”

  “She might cook. If you’re a good boy.”

  Elliott straightened up slowly and looked as if his mind were very far away. He was staring at the wall of pictures and articles from my quixotic quest. He had just been struck by some revelation. “What did you just say?”

  I tried to remember exactly what I had said so that it could trigger the thought that was clearly forming in his mind. “I said that I would cook for you. If you were a good boy.”

  It clicked in his brain; I could see it on his face. “Huh. I think I’ve just had one of those honest to God newspaperman hunches.”

  “What is it? What are you thinking?” I tried to follow his line of sight so I could decipher it too.

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure. And you’ve had enough dead ends. I’ll look it up and if there’s anything to it I’ll let you know.”

  I took his face in my hands. “Tell me now.”

  He kissed me then he pulled away to say something, but I pulled him back. He started laughing. “You’re very convincing, but I’ll see if there’s anything to it first. See you at dinner.”

  “Fine.” I let him go and then turned to stare at the wall. Perhaps inspiration could strike twice. But it looked the same as it always looked to me. There didn’t seem to be any new information or knowledge. It was no use. I gave up and called out to Logan. “Okay, missy. Let’s go shopping.”

  Logan and I walked into town to go clothes shopping. Her fifteenth birthday was in a few days and she wanted clothes for her present. It was not easy. Apparently the dress designers had decided that fifteen is a good age to start making girls look like hookers.

  We managed to find some things that we both agreed on and were now walking through the square contemplating an early lunch.

  Logan was looking past me, over my shoulder. She stopped in her tracks, and her eyes got huge. “Holy shit.”

  I snapped, “Don’t curse, Lo. Your mom will kill me.” I turned around to look in the direction she was staring, toward the inn. I saw the familiar gait and the back of his head walking toward the valet stand. “Holy shit.”

  Logan sounded as panicky as I felt. “What is Uncle Leo doing here?”

  I was having a hard time breathing. I glanced around to see if anyone else had spotted him. Which was absurd since no one here even knew Leo.

  I had an urge to run to Elliott’s house and hide. Or run to my car and drive away. Or run to the lake and swim across it until I was out of sight. My heart was racing with adrenaline and mostly I just felt like running. Leo walked into the inn after finding the valet stand empty.

  I took a deep breath and walked toward the inn. Logan was mercifully silent as she walked next to me. When we got there I hesitated before going inside. Logan gave me a hug and told me she was going to give us some time to talk.

  I walked into the inn and took a second for my eyes to adjust after being out in the sunshine. And after being temporarily blinded by seeing Leo. I glanced around the lobby and spotted him chatting with Betty Chatham. Great. Now it would be all over town that I had a fiancé and was cheating on Elliott.

  Wait, what was I saying? I wasn’t a part of this town. Or these people. And I was cheating on Leo, not Elliott. Right? Either way I had a pit in my stomach at all of the things I was about to break.

  I was walking over to him when Leo saw me. He rushed toward me and gave me a familiar hug. I asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I took an early flight into Atlanta and drove up. I just got in.” He sounded more sarcastic than excited as he said, “Surprise.”

  “I am surprised.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He kept talking. “I was just asking the manager—”

  I cut in. “Betty’s actually the owner.”

  “Okay, then I was asking the owner for some directions.” Leo was holding a piece of paper with my rental house address scrawled on it. “I couldn’t find your house. All these one-way streets turned me around.” He hugged me again stiffly and I could feel the tension mounting between us.

  Betty was watching me from behind the desk while pretending to arrange some flowers. I took Leo’s hand and pulled him outside to his rental car. “Let’s go. We need to talk.”

  “
I know we do. That’s why I came down here.” We were quiet as I directed him to the rental house.

  He dropped his overnight bag inside the door and said, “Do you remember what your mom used to say? If you want to see how someone really feels about you, show up unannounced.”

  Clearly I had just failed his first test. “My mom never said that.”

  Leo stood his ground. “Yes, she did.”

  “No, she didn’t. It was my dad. He used to say it.” I probably wouldn’t get any points for that parry, and now I was on the defensive. Failure number two.

  There was an awkward silence as I digested the fact that he had shown up here unannounced to gauge my reaction. It was a tactic. Which meant that this was a battle. Which led me to the conclusion that we were already on stage two of the breakup without me ever even firing a shot.

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed from here. We both remained silent as Leo wandered slowly around the little rental house, taking it all in. I was waiting to see which one of us would crack first. Who was I kidding? I would crack first. I could never keep my mouth shut and Leo was very firm on the first rule of negotiating: the first one to talk loses.

  Let the babbling begin. “I am happy to see you, Leo. I was just surprised.”

  His eyes were firm, not letting any emotion creep in at the moment and his guard was up. Locked and loaded. He said pointedly, “I’m here to help you put your mother to rest. I know it’s important to you and regardless of . . . I wanted to be here for you. That’s why you came down here.” He was flipping through the accumulation of research, pictures, printouts, and maps strewn across the dining room table, shaking his head. “Before you escalated everything anyway.” He looked away from the Janie Jones project and back to me.

  “So . . . you’re here to help me finish this?”

  Leo spit out a humorless little laugh. “Finish what? Your quest about your mother or our relationship?” He was trying to use his controlled, professional lawyer voice. I wasn’t sure how long he would be able to keep that up, but at the moment it was making this whole thing a lot less emotional and less messy.

  I half sat and half fell onto the couch. How in the world was I supposed to start this conversation? “I’m not sure what happened, or what’s been happening, to us, Leo.” How was I going to put into words the things I had been feeling for the last few months? “I . . . I feel like we haven’t been in a good place lately. I think that you know that as well as I do. I know you think I’ve been hiding out down here as a way to avoid my life, us. And maybe I was to some extent, but honestly I just needed some room to breathe, some space to figure out what I wanted.”

  Leo was pacing in front of me, now a bundle of barely contained nerves. “Do you have any idea how selfish you sound right now, Olivia?”

  I answered honestly. “Yes.”

  “And you don’t care? You don’t care how this all affects me or how this looks?”

  “Of course I care how it affects you, but no I don’t care how it looks.” I was staring at my hands because I was having a hard time looking him in the eye. I still couldn’t adequately process the fact that he was standing in this living room.

  He stopped pacing and shoved his hands in his pockets. “When were you planning to tell me how you’ve been feeling?”

  “Are you kidding me?” My voice came out sounding shrill and maybe a little desperate. “I’ve been trying, Leo! I’ve been calling you since I got here. I wanted to ask you what you were thinking, if you were having the same thoughts, but you wouldn’t even talk to me. You kept putting me off because you had a meeting or a flight or a dinner.”

  He was trying not to raise his voice, but I could tell it was taking a lot of effort. “This isn’t the kind of conversation you have on the telephone.”

  “No, I know. But it would’ve been a start.” It would have shown me that I was a priority to Leo if nothing else. Although all it would have accomplished was a quicker breakup because that’s where we had been heading for months. He was here now and it was time to start the conversation. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things while I’ve been down here. See things from a different perspective. And it’s made me realize that you and I have gotten into a routine, but I’m not sure either one of us really stopped to think about it.”

  He looked more impatient than mad or upset. “Why do you always make that sound like a bad thing, Olivia?”

  “It’s not. It’s not a bad thing. If it’s making us happy, but I don’t think it is. We both work crazy hours, and I know you love your job but I don’t love mine. It’s making me miserable. Our careers are the overriding focus of our entire existence. I don’t want that.”

  “Then get a different job.” He slapped the back of the chair without much conviction and I could tell he wished he’d hit it harder.

  “That’s not the real problem, or the solution.” I couldn’t stay seated with the nervous energy running through me and I stood up too. “What I’m trying to say is that because our jobs were keeping us so busy and consumed so much of our energy we didn’t have time to really stop and think about much of anything. We’ve just been blindly following some path, without asking ourselves if it’s what we want.”

  “Jesus, Olivia.” There was a coffee table and an armchair between us. I wondered if he would’ve been shaking me by the shoulders as he said that if the furniture placement hadn’t been set up to block it. “You don’t think we’ve been asking ourselves what we want? We’ve analyzed the shit out of this relationship on that goddamn couch for a year.”

  I took a deep breath. I needed to stop scooting around the perimeter of it and just say it. “I haven’t been happy. I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t think that’s a good reason for us to keep this up.”

  “Keep this up?” Leo stopped and looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time since he had shown up here. He was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “Look, I can’t make you happy, Olivia.” He was quoting our therapist. “Only you can make yourself happy.”

  “I’m not putting this on you. I’m not blaming you because I feel this way. I know this is all me, all my fault. But I’m trying to explain it to you.” I looked out at the thick, green blur of trees surrounding the dark, still water in the lake and the beaten-up mismatched chairs on the screen porch. I could hear the sounds of motorboats on the lake and crickets outside. “I think I’ve found a way to make myself happy. Here.”

  “So what is it that you’re saying, exactly?” He wanted me to make the first offer, to spell out the terms of our dissolution.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m saying that I think this is over. You and me. I don’t think we’ve been working for a while. And I’m saying that I think we should be honest about it and admit it before we end up really hurting each other.”

  He was nodding slowly, as if trying to digest that before saying anything. Finally he asked, “Do you really mean that?”

  “I do mean it.” A tear traced down my face and I wiped it away. “Leo we aren’t even married yet and we’ve been going to counseling for a year.”

  Now he just looked tired. He finally sat down. “That’s the same thing Georgia said.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Was Georgia talking to Leo behind my back? I moved over and sat next to him on the couch. “What did she say?” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice. Leo looked at me in a way that told me I had not succeeded.

  “Look, I’ve known Georgia and William almost as long as I’ve known you. Of course we’ve been talking. We started out talking, and worrying, about the way you were handling Janie’s death, but then we sort of moved on to other topics.”

  I wondered if she had said anything to Leo about Elliott. I hoped not. That was my awful horrible story to have to contend with, eventually. “Other topics?” I asked.

  Leo took my left hand and squeezed my finger where my engagement ring should have been. I would need to return it to him. I said, “It’s at Georgia’s house.�
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  “I know.” He looked defeated, which was a look I had never before seen on him. “When I saw it there . . .”

  I rushed to try to explain it all better. “I didn’t plan to stay down here this long. I really didn’t think I would be embarking on some life-altering trip.” The tears were coming and there was no point in trying to stop them. “I honestly just wanted a break for a minute so I could find out about my mom’s life. I wanted to understand where she came from. Then everything got so complicated. But the more time I spent here I felt like I got . . . I’m not sure what, maybe some clarity?” I was trying not to sob. “I love you, Leo. I honestly do, and I never wanted to hurt you. I just know that this, us, isn’t working. Not anymore.” I was going to have to tell him about Elliott, but I didn’t know how to broach the subject without Leo blaming this whole breakup on him when it was solely my fault.

  “How could you be feeling all of this and not bother talking to me about it? You’re not even giving me a chance to fight for us.”

  Those were the words he used, but there wasn’t any conviction in his voice.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Leo had flown down here knowing that there wasn’t anything left to fight for. He already knew that he was always putting me off for work. He had seen the catatonic and detached way I had been wandering through life these last two years. He understood that my reaction to the idea of a concrete date for our wedding had panicked me to the point of fleeing, and that it was a bad sign. He was here for the face-to-face, the logistics meeting to iron out the details. That’s really what this surprise visit was: a postmortem.

  The two of us argued back and forth for hours saying all of the things that had been bottled up, but we tried to keep it civil. The sun moved slowly across the room as we dissected the relationship, pulling it apart bit by bit.