by Ron Carter
They walked across the grass past the front of the white church with the tall bell tower, to the side door, where Billy knocked and they waited until there was a stir inside and the door opened. The watery old eyes of Silas brightened when he saw them, and he thrust his wrinkled hand with the big knuckles forward to Billy.
“Billy and Brigitte! Margaret said you would be coming. What a joy. Do come in. Come in. Mattie’s inside. Taken a chill, you know.”
Billy gently shook the fragile hand, and Silas led them into the tiny parlor. Mattie was seated at one side with a worn, gray shawl around her narrow, pinched shoulders. She leaned forward and struggled to rise. Billy put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Don’t get up, Mattie. It’s just us. It is good to see you.”
There was gratitude in her eyes. “It is good to have you here,” she said. Her voice was weak. “Silas said you would be coming.” Through more than half a century of marriage, she and Silas had yearned and prayed for children that never came. To fill the void in their hearts, the two of them had become second parents to the children in their congregation.
Brigitte knelt beside her chair to look directly into her face. “Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?”
The wrinkled old face smiled. “I’m fine. Silas tries so hard.”
Silas gestured to two straight-backed chairs. “Please be seated.” They sat, and he took the only remaining chair in the plain room, facing them. Billy spoke.
“We wish to know if you could perform our marriage on the thirty-first day of this month. A Friday.”
Mattie clasped her hands together beneath her chin. “Ohhhh! I’ve waited so long for this!”
Silas bowed his head in thought for a few moments. “I’m sure the church is free that day. What time?”
Brigitte said quietly, “In the early evening. Seven o’clock?”
“Yes, that will be fine,” Silas said.
Billy broke in. “Could you make the announcement for the next three Sundays? I think that’s what the law requires.”
“Yes, I can. And I’ll prepare the certificate. You can take it to Harold to get the license issued.”
“That will be fine,” Billy said.
Mattie broke in, eyes glistening. “Brigitte, do you have your wedding dress?”
“No. Mother and Prissy and I will sew it.”
“Oh, I can hardly wait, “ Mattie exclaimed. “You will be lovely. Just lovely.”
Billy stood. “I think that finishes the business. We should go. Thank you.”
Mattie interrupted. “You two come here for a moment. I need to hold you both.”
They both came to her chair and bent low while the thin arms reached, and she held them close and kissed each of them on the cheek as though they were her own. They felt the slight tremor in the frail body, and they saw the distorted knuckles in the blue-veined hands, and the fingers that would never again lie straight. They kissed her on her cool cheek and they straightened and peered down at her for a moment while she clutched their hands to her breast.
“Come again soon,” she pled. “Oh, please.”
Brigitte smiled. “We will. I promise.”
Silas followed them back to the door and they said their good-byes, and the small, round-shouldered man watched the two walk into the soft warmth of deep dusk and disappear.
Billy and Brigitte walked the crooked cobblestone street casually, greeting people as they passed, talking as best friends and sweethearts. Neither knew when it happened, but they found themselves holding hands, and Brigitte clutching his arm, glowing with excitement as they talked of the Cutler home, and the peculiar new law for obtaining their marriage license, and who would be at the wedding. All too soon they were at the gate into the Dunson yard, and then at the front door. Billy knocked and they entered to be met by the entire family.
“What did Silas say?” Margaret asked.
Brigitte grinned and her eyes shone, and there was color in her cheeks as she spoke. “We will be married the evening of Friday, the thirty-first. At seven o’clock.”
Prissy covered her mouth with her hand, nearly trembling with excitement and anticipation. “Ohhh!” she exclaimed.
Margaret bobbed her head. “We have a lot to do, starting with your wedding dress.” She looked at Billy. “We aren’t supposed to speak of such things in front of the groom, but to me you’re just Billy, and part of the family for the past thirty years. The groom part hasn’t caught up with me yet.”
Billy ducked his head to hide a tight grin. “To be honest, it hasn’t caught up with me very much, either. This is a lot like marrying into my own family.”
Caleb shook his head. “Be patient. It’ll get worse.”
Adam laughed out loud.
Billy reached for the door latch. “I had better get back home. Mother will want to know. And Trudy.” He opened the door, and Brigitte stepped outside with him, and suddenly Caleb followed them and closed the door behind him. For a moment he stood there in the dim light, and then he reached to tenderly place the flat of his hand against the cheek of his sister who stood unmoving in surprise. He said nothing. He just stood with his hand touching her face, and she raised her hand to cover his. He dropped his hand to face Billy, and for a moment the two men looked into each other. They said nothing because words between them were not necessary as Caleb silently spoke of his deep love and respect for the strong, gentle man before him, and Billy silently promised he would spend his life trying to make Brigitte happy. Then Caleb opened the door and stepped inside, to leave the two alone in the cool of the evening and the dim, silvery light of the stars.
Twenty-five days. Three weeks and four days. Six hundred hours. In the two households—Dunsons and Weemses—Brigitte, Margaret, Prissy, Kathleen, Dorothy, and Trudy were counting the minutes while they worked and planned and talked. To the women, it simultaneously felt as though the day would never arrive and that it was arriving far too quickly. The contradiction never occurred to the women. They only knew the anticipation of the wedding, with all the fuss and preparation it thrust upon them, was one of the most delicious events in the life of any woman, and they savored every moment of it, hating that it would end on August thirty-first. At the same time, it seemed that August thirty-first was a time lost somewhere in the mists of the eternal future, never to arrive. The torture was exquisite, yet they reveled in it, loving every moment of preparation. Their world made perfect sense. To them.
The men observed the women scurrying about and listened to their unending buzz about trivialities that had scant meaning, no logic, and made absolutely no sense. Befuddled by the preparations, they looked at each other and shrugged and condescendingly tolerated the busyness while they went on with the real business of life—running a shipping business, innocently blind to the joy and inner fulfillment that was taking place all around them in the women.
The sewing of the wedding dress became the all-consuming project. They spent three days visiting every shop in Boston that had material in pure enough white and suitable to a wedding gown for Brigitte Dunson. For four days they pored over patterns, before deciding none of them was quire right. Brigitte’s gown would have to have a certain simplicity yet elegance. It would need to be perfect, and they would design their own.
Then came the laying out of the silk on the big dining table, pinning their pattern to the cloth, and the careful tedium of using Margaret’s shears to carefully make the cuts. And then the construction began. No one counted the hours Brigitte stood still while they hung and rehung the gown on her, adjusting pins, making tucks, standing back with their faces puckered while they fervently sought and corrected any defect that would detract from their creation. They worked with microscopic accuracy to attach the lace, sparingly, at the throat, and the wrists. They gathered together for hours with needles, making the tiny stitches while they chattered and giggled, and no one noticed or cared that the needlework lagged far behind the gossip and the talk.
The men—Matthew, Caleb, Adam, a
nd Billy—had a shipping company to run, and though the world in which they moved made reasonable allowances for the interruptions represented by a marriage, even so great an event was not permitted to interfere with the real business that held the world together. There were contracts to be made and honored, ships and crews constantly at risk, exposed to the vagaries of the sea, constantly shifting tariffs and taxes, records, competition, and the never-ending drain of worry at the downward political and economic spiral that kept the United States teetering on the brink of destruction. If the men gathered in the maddening secrecy of the hot, sweaty, deadly battle going on in the East Room of the Statehouse in Philadelphia were to fail in this last attempt to save the union, only the Almighty knew how quickly, and how completely, the entire country would come to pieces. So the men of the Dunson and Weems families moved in the affairs of their practical, logical, sensible world, while the women tolerated them and moved on with their work of perpetuating the human race.
The women debated for fifteen days before they reached agreement. There would be no written announcements; the public notices posted by Reverend Olmstead would be sufficient. There would be no great feast for loved ones and friends following the wedding. That would come later in a housewarming sometime in September when the weather was cooler and the newlyweds had settled into their home near the Common.
On each of the three Sundays remaining in August, Silas stood in his pulpit in the white church as he had for more than forty years and formally announced the forthcoming marriage of Brigitte Dunson and Billy Weems, to take place at the church on the evening of Friday, August thirty-first. Each time, he paused while murmuring interrupted and the congregation craned their necks to peer at the two of them, sitting in their pews as they had since anyone could remember, smiling, beaming, blushing. The moment Silas concluded the benediction on the services, open talk erupted, and few people left until they had crowded around the two families on the grass in the churchyard to swamp them with congratulations and wish Brigitte and Billy a long and happy life together.
On the third Sunday, following the services, Silas delivered to Billy the certificate declaring that the required public notice had been given. On Monday, Billy and Brigitte visited the office of Harold Trumbull, Boston City Clerk, and left with the marriage license and Harold’s beaming congratulations. That afternoon they met Horatio Cutler at the office of his attorney, where Billy made the necessary payment and they signed the purchase contract for the Cutler home near the Common.
The morning of August thirty-first brought a spectacular sunrise of high clouds shot through with reds and yellows and pinks, and a cool breeze ruffling the flags and the sails along the waterfront. The men were at the Dunson & Weems office by seven o’clock, and stayed through the day until five o’clock, when they turned it over to Tom Covington to close, and walked home in the unexpectedly cool late afternoon. During the day, the women disciplined themselves to perform the necessary household chores of making the beds and setting breakfast and the midday meals on the table, with each of them glancing at the mantel clock not less than fifty times. The thought of supper never entered their minds.
At 6:45 p.m. two shining coaches, each drawn by a pair of matched gray mares, stopped before the Dunson home, and Matthew stepped from one of the coaches into the street, through the gate, and quickly to the Dunsons’ door. Margaret led Brigitte from the house, followed by Prissy, Dorothy, Trudy, Caleb and Adam, and they all followed Matthew back to the street, where he helped the five women into the first coach where Kathleen was waiting with young John seated beside her. The boy wore a dark woollen suit with a starched white shirt and tie, and a decided frown of disgust at being required to endure all the unnecessary, ridiculous stir surrounding the simple act of getting married. If people wanted to get married, why couldn’t they just go see Silas and get married?
With the women and their gowns, all around him, John tugged at Kathleen’s elbow. “Mother,” he asked quietly, “can I go sit with the men?”
Kathleen reached for Matthew’s hand. “Can John sit with you?”
Matthew looked at the pleading in the boy’s eyes. “Come on,” he answered, and the boy fairly leaped from the coach to seize his father’s hand. The men entered the second coach, Matthew signaled, and the horses stepped out with their iron shoes ringing on the cobblestones as they moved through the familiar streets toward the church where Matthew had left Billy half an hour earlier. It seemed the ride had hardly begun when the drivers in their high-topped hats hauled back on the reins and whoaed the horses to a stop before the church. The men were on the ground before the coaches stopped rocking in their leathers and trotted to the coach ahead to open the doors and help the women down. They all paused while the ladies tugged to straighten their dresses, and for a moment the men studied Brigitte. They could not remember her ever being so radiant, so beautiful, so alive. Matthew offered his arm as the head of the Dunson family, Brigitte took it, and they led the procession up the cobblestone walkway to the doors of the church. Matthew opened the two doors, peered inside for a moment, located Billy standing before Silas at the front of the chapel, and once again took Brigitte on his arm. Silas raised one hand to signal to Matthew, and the procession walked steadily down the aisle. While hidden behind the organ, aged Ernst Steinhold pumped the bellows, while his wife, Kirsten, played “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”
The chapel was filled with the friends and neighbors and loved ones Billy and Brigitte had known most of their lives. The westering sun set the stained glass windows high in the walls of the building afire, bathing the austere old room in a glow of every color in the rainbow. Radiant in her simple yet elegant wedding dress, Brigitte had not advanced fifteen feet down the aisle when the first subdued, discreet sniffling was heard. The two families took their places in their usual pews while Matthew walked forward to leave Brigitte standing shoulder to shoulder with Billy as the couple faced old Silas.
The organ quieted, the Reverend Olmstead raised a hand, and began in his high, reedy voice.
“We are gathered here this beautiful evening to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony according to the command of the Great Jehovah in the book of Genesis . . . ”
Margaret swallowed hard and silently raised her handkerchief to wipe at the first tear. Dorothy’s chin was quivering. Prissy and Trudy were wiping at tears and didn’t know why.
“ . . . marriage is according to the eternal plan. . . .”
Matthew studied Billy’s back, with memories flashing. The two boys—Matthew serious, Billy steady—the young men who walked to war at Lexington and Concord with John Dunson—Billy shot and bayoneted—John dying—Matthew refusing to leave Billy—staying with him, sleeping beside his bed while he wasted and all but died—his slow recovery—both of them taking up arms against the British—the battles, Billy a lieutenant with the bull-strength to pick up an eleven-hundred pound cannon to save his sergeant the morning they stormed British Redoubt Number Ten at Yorktown—six years of endless fighting—somehow surviving—coming home—the shipping business they set up together—and now . . . the steady, common, plain-faced man he had loved from earliest memory, standing before Silas Olmstead to marry his sister. Matthew glanced at the floor and swallowed hard and raised his head once again.
“ . . . who gives this woman to this man in holy matrimony . . . ”
“I do.” Matthew’s words sounded too loud in the quiet of the room. Silas nodded and Matthew turned back to take his place beside Kathleen. Almost unobserved, he slipped his arm about her shoulder and drew her close while John looked up at his father with the silent question written all over his face. “When can we go home?”
“ . . . if any man has reason against this marriage let him speak now or forever hold his peace . . . ”
The only sound in the room was the quiet sounds of women working with their handkerchiefs.
“ . . . you may exchange rings . . . ”
Heads craned to watch Bill
y slip the beautiful wedding ring on Brigitte’s delicate finger and Brigitte to work the large wedding band onto Billy’s thick finger.
“ . . . by the authority vested in me I pronounce you husband and wife . . . ”
Prissy and Trudy stood on tiptoe, waiting.
“You may kiss your bride in the bonds of matrimony.”
Both girls clapped their hands over their mouths and tears came as Billy tenderly bent forward to kiss his wife and Brigitte kissed him.
Old Silas could not resist. “You may kiss her again, if you’ve a notion.”
Startled, Billy looked at him, and Silas gestured with his hand while laughter filled the chapel, and Billy kissed his sweetheart once more for the world to see.
Silas bowed his head and the room quieted while he petitioned the Almighty to grant the two newlyweds long and happy lives, filled with love and children. “Amen.”
Ernst once again pumped the bellows and Kirsten played the organ while Billy offered Brigitte his arm and they walked together back down the aisle, with their families and then the congregation following them out into the cool of the evening. For a time they crowded about the couple, hugging Brigitte and pumping Billy’s hand in congratulations. And then Matthew quietly took Billy’s arm and led him and Brigitte to the waiting coach with the family following. He opened the coach door and Billy assisted Brigitte up the step, then followed her to take his seat beside her. Matthew gazed at them for several moments and they looked back at him, and then the rest of the family crowded around the open coach door with the congregation gathered behind. Margaret and Dorothy leaned in to seize the hands of their children, then backed away as Matthew closed the door and signaled the driver. The whip popped, the driver spoke, and the coach rolled forward. Half an hour passed before the crowd thinned, and Matthew and the family boarded the second coach, to deliver Dorothy and Trudy to their small home, before moving on to Margaret’s home where the Dunsons all stepped down. Matthew settled the fare with the driver, and the family walked through the white picket gate to the front door and into the parlor.