The Book of Essie

by Meghan MacLean Weir

  “Settle down now. Let’s save some of this enthusiasm for the reception tomorrow. I’m told it’s going to be one heck of a party.”

  There is more clapping and then the audience, as if on cue, falls silent almost all at once. Mother passes a hand over her eyes to collect herself and then starts to speak again.

  “There have been other weddings before this one. Other couples have stood up in front of their families, in front of God Himself, and pledged to carry His light onward together. I’ve been lucky to watch my own four sons marry four of the most beautiful and supportive women a mother could dream of for her children. I’ve watched our family grow in love with the birth of each grandchild, and I can truly say that with the passing of each year, we have only become more and more blessed.

  “Which brings us to today. I thought I would be up here to talk about Elizabeth long before I had to get ready to say good-bye to Esther Anne, but it seems Our Lord had other plans. It also seems likely that given how adept Elizabeth has become at dodging the cameras, when the time does come for her to tie the knot, she’ll do it without letting any of us know.” There are a few good-natured snickers at this, and Lissa, who I see now has settled herself next to Roarke and Adam, stands and curtsys primly. The laughter swells and some people start clapping.

  “So instead,” Mother continues, raising her voice to cut through the applause, “I’m here to talk to you about Esther Anne. The baby of the family, who is not a baby anymore.” She waits for the crowd to provide the expected awww and then moves on. “And because this is a wedding, I’m also here to talk to you about Roarke, the young man my daughter has chosen to navigate this world alongside, a worthy companion for what I am sure will be an exciting trip. I could not ask for two finer people to honor here tonight. But they were not always the self-assured young adults you’ll see exchanging vows tomorrow. And if you’ll indulge me for just a few minutes more, I’d like to take you on a journey back in time, a journey through the lives of these two young people I know we’ve all come to love.”

  The spotlight cuts out then and a projector illuminates both Mother and the wall behind her. Mother blinks furiously and scurries quickly to the side. Music starts. It is a song I remember Daddy singing when I was young, his voice gentle and drawling, coaxing me to sleep on long car rides or in the hammock out by the lake. There is a slide with our names on it, Roarke’s and mine, and then the pictures start to flash before us. Roarke as a tiny scrunched-up ball of brand-new baby; me wearing a christening gown. There are other people in some of the pictures. I recognize younger versions of Roarke’s mother and father and some of the relatives I’ve met today. There are team photos from Little League, a shot of Roarke with several friends wearing matching T-shirts that say Bement that looks to have been taken at a summer camp.

  He gets older as the slideshow continues, and so do I. The projector dims and the next picture appears. I am front and center in a group photo of Daniel and Hillary on their wedding day. Both Lissa and I had been flower girls. We wear matching pale pink dresses with puffy sleeves and ruffled trims. I am smiling, and not just for the camera. I remember being happy. It had something to do with the necklace I am wearing in the picture. They are real pearls. It is still one of my favorites. Lissa had been given one as well, but she had refused to wear it to the wedding, which made Mother angry. I was glad, though. I liked having something that made me special, something that made me beautiful, something that made me stand out on my own.

  But I see now that I am not the only one wearing that necklace in the picture. Naomi is wearing one as well. And I remember something that I had somehow forgotten. It was Naomi who had given it to me, shyly, the first time that we met. A present for her boyfriend’s younger siblings, the girls she hoped to someday call sisters of her own.

  After that, all I can seem to focus on are how many of the pictures show me with Naomi. We are riding on a tandem bicycle along the dirt road near the lake house or baking cookies or lying on the beach on sandy towels, a tangle of tanned arms and legs. I am reminded then of how fiercely I had loved her in the time before. Her hair, her smile, everything about her was perfect as far as I was concerned. I made up excuses to sit next to her at family dinners or, in order to put off saying good night, would offer to carry her purse out to their car. Even in the time that came after, there are pictures of me holding Millicent on the day she was born and reading Blueberries for Sal to Nate while he fell asleep on my lap. These make me think about what Libby’s friend had said before he left, how there was goodness mixed in with all the bad.

  When the slideshow has finished, I can still see the afterimage of that rectangle of light when I close my eyes. I sigh. It is one thing to ruin Caleb or even Mother and Daddy. It is another thing entirely to ruin the life of Naomi, someone who loves me, someone who has never done me any harm.

  * * *

  —————

  When we get home, I tell Mother that I am tired and I go to my bedroom and shut the door. I change quickly and turn off the light. Then I read until my eyes are burning and it is impossible to keep the text in focus as it dances across the screen. It is not until my stomach rumbles that I realize I did not eat anything at the rehearsal dinner. Rubbing at my face, I exhale slowly and close the file, pull out the flash drive and slip it into the pocket of my pajama pants. I crack the door to my room and listen before I venture out into the hall, then head down the stairs.

  Before I can make for the kitchen, I hear a noise from the darkened parlor. It is just the whisper of air as it is forced out of a cushion, but it is enough to let me know that someone is there. I stop in the doorway and examine the shadow. Not Mother, which is a relief but still odd, since the parlor is her domain. Instead it is my father sitting there. I try to remember the last time we were alone together and can’t.

  I consider moving on without saying anything, but somehow I know that even though he has not acknowledged me, he would call after me if I turned away. So I take a step forward and into the room.

  “Daddy?” I say softly. “What are you doing down here? Does Mother know you’re up?”

  He continues to look out the window without answering and I bend over slightly so that I can see what he sees, the streetlight and the clouds parting to reveal the moon.

  “Your mother is asleep,” he manages finally. “Something about looking fresh for tomorrow. You should follow her lead. You only have one wedding day.”

  He turns away from the window and I feel his gaze slide over my face as if memorizing it and then his eyes reluctantly break away. He looks sad and I feel the urge to comfort him and immediately the anger from earlier this evening returns, because shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t he be comforting me?

  I stay silent, waiting. If ever there were a time for questions, this is it, but I find that there is nothing that I want answered. Or rather, I do not want the answers if it means I have to ask. I do not want to sound like I am begging. I do not want to admit that he has the power here.

  Daddy absently twists his wedding band around his finger, looking down at his hands as if surprised to find that they belong to him. Then he looks out the window again.

  “Your mother, once she gets her heart set on something, well, there was nothing I could say. She wanted you married, so you’re going to be married. Goodness only knows what put that idea in her head, but here we are nonetheless.”

  He looks truly at a loss and I feel the anger all over again. Even if Mother has not told him directly, how could he fail to guess?

  “I’m pregnant,” I say in a moment of pique.

  Daddy absorbs this as if the revelation is an actual physical blow.

  “Jesus,” he breathes.

  “I don’t think Jesus had anything to do with it.”

  He looks at me again, his eyebrows drawn together. “No, I don’t suppose he did.”

  I d
o nothing to interrupt the silence but instead lift my chin slightly in what I hope he will register as defiance. But he does not look at me.

  “I did my best,” he says finally. “I tried to head things off. The summer after you were born there was an incident with a cat. He helped make posters to hang up all around the neighborhood. Elizabeth did as well. But the cat wasn’t missing. It was dead. I hoped that might be the worst of it, but we both know what happened next.”

  I hold my breath, then say, “Lissa. Is that what you mean? Is Lissa what happened next?”

  “The director at Holden Park told us we wouldn’t have anything else to worry about. Not after he finished out the program there. They promised he was safe.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “No. He wasn’t.”

  There are so many things that are left unsaid, but it does not matter. The only thing that matters is that he had known about Caleb all along.

  I stand in the door while I pull enough air into my lungs to speak.

  “I forgive you,” I tell my father.

  Then, no longer hungry, I climb the stairs and squeeze the flash drive in one clenched fist as I fall asleep.

  Roarke

  The suit they buy me to get married in is Armani. I’ve never felt anything so soft in my entire life. Blake and Reggie strut around the room in the church basement that we’ve been given to get ready in before the ceremony like they’re preparing for the red carpet. Rand rolls up one of the paper programs printed for the service and holds it out to them like it’s a microphone and asks them questions about their shoes and hair. Caleb’s still off with Naomi somewhere, so we have the room to ourselves and I feel relaxed—excited, even.

  There’s a knock at the door and I hear my father’s voice coming from the hall.

  “Is everyone decent?” he calls and forces a chuckle.

  The door opens a crack and he peeks inside and then throws it open wider. My mom is standing beside him. She looks unsure of herself, almost as if she’s afraid she will be told that she has no right to be here. I open the door fully to let them in, but they take only a few steps inside the room.

  “Just wanted to check if you boys were okay,” Mom says timidly. “Not too nervous.”

  She reaches out to brush an invisible piece of lint from my lapel, then touches the tip of one finger to the single white lily fastened there. She considers the flower, lips pressed together thinly, and allows her hand to drift back to her side. It moves as if disconnected from intent, a boat caught up in a current, and it occurs to me that this is how my mother herself must feel. Moving from wave to wave and out to deeper waters without a rudder. Powerless to avoid being smashed up against the rocks. Her wrist turns once, quickly, a spasm, and then falls still again.

  “We’re fine, ma’am,” Blake answers for me. “Aren’t we?”

  Blake claps a hand on my arm and jostles me back to my senses. I blink and look away from Mom’s watery eyes and over toward my father. They are both dressed well for the occasion. The clothes are nicer than anything they would ever buy on their own. Mom’s hair has been curled and pinned up in a complicated arrangement upon which sits a small round hat festooned with pieces of netting and feathers dyed to match her dress. I’ve never seen my mother in this sort of hat before. I wonder if this is by choice or because it never occurred to her. It’s probably the latter. But it’s also possible that there are pictures of such hats in her box, the one that is filled with magazine clippings of other people’s kitchens, other people’s children playing in other people’s yards, elderly couples lounging on the porch in matching rockers. Maybe this hat is what Mom wanted all along but could never even hope to wish for. Until now.

  Dad coughs and I can tell by how he looks at me that we are thinking the same thing.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” he tells me. “Not just today, but always.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I answer.

  Mom begins to cry.

  “Don’t,” I say. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”

  “Of course,” she says and opens her eyes wide and inhales deeply. “You’re right. How silly.”

  They reach out to touch me one more time and I hear the shutter of a camera sliding open and shut as an unseen photographer captures this moment for posterity and then my parents leave me behind.

  * * *

  —————

  I spend the next fifteen minutes or so with Libby. It turns out that Blake and Reggie, and Rand as well, have been looking forward to this more than I realized. Liberty Bell is something of a fantasy for them, it seems. They have never met a celebrity whose last name wasn’t Hicks. Rand practices some lines of small talk and asks Blake and Reggie how he should stand. As their excitement builds, I feel a sudden urge to protect Libby from this overzealousness, but when she enters the room, Rand is polite. They all are. Their voices are a bit too loud, their faces clownishly animated, but there’s nothing gross about the way they look at her and I’m relieved.

  Libby asks me how I’m feeling while Margot holds us in frame and zooms in on our faces.

  When we’re finished, Libby leans in close and whispers, “Have you spoken to Essie?”

  I shake my head. “No. Not since last night. Not since the beginning of the party. We sort of lost track of each other after that. Why?”

  Libby fumbles with her microphone. She looks unused to holding it. For all of our other interviews we’ve been miked and we will be today, during the ceremony, but she’ll have to use this again when she interviews us outside.

  “It’s nothing. I said something I shouldn’t have, I think. I pushed too hard where it wasn’t my place. I was hoping that we would get a chance to talk just now, but the other girls were there. It’s all right. I’ll find her after.”

  I nod as if I understand what she’s saying, but I don’t, not really.

  “Was Lissa there?” I ask.

  Libby laughs and her face clears as if the other thing is forgotten.

  “She was there. And she has them all wrapped around her little finger from what I saw. They could hardly stop giggling long enough for Essie to film her segment. Celia Hicks didn’t look too pleased by the scene when she came in, which I think only added to Lissa’s enjoyment.”

  “That sounds about right,” I say. “Families are complicated like that.”

  “You’re right. It’s not just this one,” Libby agrees. She looks sad, but it passes quickly and she gives my hand a squeeze and wishes me luck.

  Margot comes over then and wraps her arms around me. She holds me tight and for a long time, but it’s not uncomfortable. When she pulls away, there are tears in her eyes.

  “You’re one of the good ones, Roarke Richards. I hope you know that. A prince among men.”

  Then they’re gone.

  I blink for a moment at the empty space where Margot and Libby had been and feel a shiver pass through me. Not everyone will feel the same way, I know, if the truth becomes public. For the first time, I consider that the truth is not only about Essie, it’s a truth about me as well. Not the whole truth, maybe, but I’m part of the story just the same. A prince, Margot said. Is that how people would see me? As a rescuer? A slayer of dragons? Neither of those seems right, or fair. If there’s any rescuing happening, it is Essie who is doing it. She has rescued herself.

  “I have to pee,” I tell the others, though really what I need to do is walk.

  I head down the hall toward the men’s room, aware of the hum of the fluorescent lights, the muffled footfalls moving across the floors upstairs. What’s above me? The kitchen alongside the refectory, maybe. I think about the church overhead, a space that has become familiar if not altogether comfortable over the last month. I had always thought of the building as ugly and I still do. It feels more like a sports stadium than a place of worship. There are too many spotlights, too many screens and p
rojectors. They’re necessary, I realize, because otherwise Pastor Hicks would be practically invisible to the people in the back rows, the folks like my family, but it cheapens it, I think, the glitz, the glamour.

  Spending more time in the church has not changed my mind about that, but I’ve also been here when the lights are off, when there’s just the sun through colored glass to illuminate the space. When that happens, the long strips of carpet that run the aisles are painted in every color imaginable and the vaulted ceiling above me, with its painted cherubs, its golden stars on a backdrop of cobalt, makes me appreciate that people are capable of creating beauty, not just destroying it. Standing just before the altar where the mosaic starts, the tiny chips of stone depicting the Last Supper, I can stand on Jesus’s face and look upward toward the crimson- and orange- and lime-tinted glow and experience something close to peace. Something like belonging. Something close to faith.

  I pace the hall, willing my body to remember this feeling and slow the pounding in my chest.

  “Psst,” I hear from somewhere behind me. “Roarke. In here.”

  I catch a glimpse of Lissa’s face, the curve of her arm beckoning me to follow. She disappears back inside the room from which she’d called me. I creep forward, half convinced someone is watching, and then I duck inside.

  When I enter the room, I don’t even notice Lissa, though she must be somewhere nearby. There is only Essie, standing before me, and I can’t look away. She is shimmering. That’s the only way to describe it. At first I’m not entirely certain that she’s real. She takes a step forward and the soft rustle of fabric is finally enough to convince me.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I say too loudly. “I’m not supposed to see you.”

  Essie laughs and it’s the same tinkling sound that first made me think I could trust her. So much has happened since that day, so much has changed, but that laugh has stayed the same. I realize that I love her. I love the girl I am about to marry. Maybe not in the way a man usually loves a woman, but I love her all the same.