The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  the

  Wedding

  Machine

  OTHER NOVELS BY BETH WEBB HART

  Adelaide Piper

  Grace at Low Tide

  © 2007 by Beth Webb Hart

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

  Scripture quotations are from the King James and NIV versions of the Bible. Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV.® © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Page design by Mandi Cofer.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hart, Beth Webb, 1971–

  The Wedding Machine / Beth Webb Hart.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59554-199-4 (softcover)

  1. Weddings—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 4. South Carolina—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A78395W43 2008

  813'.6—dc22

  2007044723

  Printed in the United States of America

  07 08 09 10 11 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  ONE: Ray

  TWO: Ray

  THREE: Ray

  FOUR: Kitty B.

  FIVE: Kitty B.

  SIX: Hilda

  SEVEN: Hilda

  EIGHT: Sis

  NINE: Sis

  TEN: Hilda

  ELEVEN: Kitty B.

  TWELVE: Ray

  THIRTEEN: Hilda

  FOURTEEN: Ray

  FIFTEEN: Ray

  SIXTEEN: Kitty B.

  SEVENTEEN: Sis

  EIGHTEEN: Sis

  NINETEEN: Ray

  TWENTY: Kitty B.

  TWENTY-ONE: Sis

  TWENTY-TWO: Ray

  TWENTY-THREE: Kitty B.

  TWENTY-FOUR: Ray

  TWENTY-FIVE: Sis

  TWENTY-SIX: Ray

  TWENTY-SEVEN: Ray

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  AN EXCERPT FROM ADELAIDE PIPER

  This book is dedicated

  to my mother,

  Betty Jelks,

  and all of the remarkable ladies

  who make up the wedding machine

  in Greenville, South Carolina.

  PROLOGUE

  ~ JUNE 7, 1969 ~

  “You’ll get this down to a science, sweet,” Roberta said, hunching over the kitchen table in her beaded sea-foam cocktail dress and bedroom slippers. Her middle-aged hands were both dexterous and feminine, and they were almost always at work creating something exquisite. Ray studied them trancelike, hoping to learn their tricks. The well-worn platinum solitaire on Roberta’s left hand caught the light as her long fingers curled into fists that funneled the white rice into a tiny tulle sack before cinching it tight with a thin satin ribbon.

  “Now you try,” Roberta said, passing the small plastic funnel to Ray.

  The champagne from the rehearsal dinner was wearing off, and Ray felt like she was moving in slow motion. She took a good scoop of extra long grain rice and poured it into the plastic mouth where it spun down the funnel, filling the bottom of the gold-rimmed teacup.

  “Good girl.” Roberta smiled, looking around the kitchen at the plastic jugs of stephanotis, yellow roses, and daisies that would be formed into six nosegays and a cascading bridal bouquet by her small army of friends the next morning.

  Roberta’s army was composed of The Jasper Garden Club, The Colleton County Debutante Club, and the Wedding, Flower, and Altar Guild of All Saints Episcopal Church. As far as Ray could tell, these ladies were beacons of refinement and the force behind all that was civilized in Jasper, a small Lowcountry town between Charleston and Savannah tucked quietly behind Edisto Island and the ACE Basin.

  Jasper would have been completely hidden if it weren’t for Highway 17, the crumbling two-lane road that traced the coastline, splitting cypress swamps and tidal creeks edging right up to the 350,000-acre ACE Basin, where three rivers converged to form the largest, wildest estuarine preserve on the East Coast. Jasper bordered the northeast side of the basin where dolphins, gators, minks, otters, and every manner of waterfowl and shore bird prospered from the daily six-foot inflow and outflow of saltwater, freshwater, and brackish water that rose and fell on cue like the sun itself.

  Ray had become best friends with Roberta’s daughter, Kitty B., seven years earlier when they stole a watermelon together one August night just before the start of their sophomore year at William Bull High School. Ray had only been in town for two weeks when the pack invited her on a ride in the back of a pickup truck.

  Now the laundry chute from Kitty B.’s bathroom down to the kitchen was open, and Ray grinned at the echoed chatter of her friends upstairs. She continued to prepare the rice sacks alongside Roberta. Though she wanted to be upstairs with the girls, Roberta was grooming Ray to lead the next generation of Jasper ladies in all facets of southern etiquette and entertaining—an unspoken understanding between them.

  “Ouch, Hilda!” Kitty B. hollered from upstairs.

  Hilda, the beauty queen of the pack, was hell-bent on trying a new curling technique on the bride that she’d read about in the beauty section of the Charleston paper. It involved wrapping an Ace bandage tightly around sponge curlers before securing it with a hairnet.

  Ray went upstairs to get some satin ribbon for Roberta from the hall closet. Ribbon in hand, she peered into the bathroom to check on the gals.

  “Ash this for me.” Hilda held out her cigarette to Sis, the third and final bridesmaid and the fourth member of their pack. “And stop looking out that window. He’ll be here soon enough, and you could learn a thing or two before your own big day.”

  “Oh, I wish mine were tomorrow,” Sis whispered in Kitty B.’s ear. Sis and her fiancé, Fitz, had been a hot item since high school, and they never seemed to tire of making out for hours at a time in the back seat of his Chevrolet. It was the summer before their last year of college, and Sis had never dated a soul but Fitz.

  Ray could hardly believe Kitty B. was getting married the very next day. Who would have ever thought she’d be the first to tie the knot?

  Kitty B. readjusted herself on the lid of her rose-colored toilet in her pink tiled bathroom as she stroked Peaches, her mangy apricot poodle, who was licking her hands as she wrung them.

  “Hold still,” Hilda said while she and Sis wrapped the thick gauze tightly around the back of Kitty B.’s head.

  “That hurts,” Kitty B. said. “You’re puncturing my scalp.”

  “Way-sa-minute,” Sis said, as Peaches closed his gooey eyes and passed gas.

  “Good gosh, that mutt stinks!” said Hilda, pinching her nose with a long metal hair pin. “I mean it, Kitty B. Put him down. Put him down or I’ll gag.”

  “No!” Kitty B. cried so loud that Peaches stood up and started to bark.

  Just as he was about to lose his balance,
Kitty B. clutched him to her chest. “LeMar is allergic to dogs, and this is my last night with him.” Then she raced into her bedroom, the loose end of the Ace bandage trailing down her back.

  “Kitty B.!” Hilda threw her half-smoked cigarette into the pink toilet bowl. “We’re not even finished!”

  “Hush, Hilda,” Sis said. “She’s doesn’t care about the hair.”

  Roberta came to the foot of the stairs and looked up at Ray.

  “Throw me that ribbon and go see about the bride.”

  Ray nodded and ran into Kitty B.’s room to find her sobbing into her pink monogrammed pillow, while Peaches danced around her head with the Ace bandage in his yippy little mouth as the wide plastic curlers unraveled one by one.

  Sis looked out the window, and Hilda sat at the vanity smoking a new Virginia Slim. She examined her mustache in the lamplight, making sure the peroxide had bleached every strand. “She’s upset about the dog, Ray.”

  Ray lay down on the bed next to Kitty B.

  “It’s okay,” she said into her friend’s ear the same way her mama had comforted Mrs. Pringle when she learned that the cancer had spread to her bones. “Tomorrow you’re marrying a tall, strapping opera singer from one of the finest families in the state.”

  “Who is allergic to my baby!” Kitty B. said, snorting into the sheets before wailing again.

  “I know,” Ray said, as she rubbed Kitty B.’s back.

  When Kitty B. finally lifted her head, her chubby cheeks were red and her lips were contorted, and there was a spot on her pillow that was a mixture of tears and drool.

  “You know I always thought I might end up as a dog trainer, Ray. And now I’m marrying a man who breaks out at the sight of one,” she said.

  “Isn’t that what Old Stained Glass keeps telling us about marriage?” Ray said, looking to Sis and Hilda to give her a little support. They were all in premarital counseling with the local priest. “Compromise, remember?”

  “LeMar can’t help his allergies,” Hilda said, pressing down a loose seam of the floral wallpaper by the window before reaching for another cigarette. “You shouldn’t fault him for it.”

  “Hilda’s right,” Ray said. “You don’t want to make LeMar miserable and uncomfortable with a pet, but there are other ways that he can make you happy.” Kitty B. looked up at Ray, her plump cheeks shining in the thick air. She put her head on Ray’s shoulder, and Ray stroked the clumps of curls that had come unraveled.

  “You mean sex?” Sis whispered.

  “Well, that’s part of it, but I mean, he’s going to vow to love her. And that means cherishing her and taking care of her always,” Ray said. “Oh, I can’t wait!” Sis stood up and bobbed on the balls of her little feet, her petite frame casting a thin shadow on the wall beside the bed. “Let’s give her the present.”

  Hilda set her cigarette in a porcelain bowl on the vanity and pulled a gift box out of her overnight bag. Kitty B. sat up straight and opened the box. It was a pale green silk negligee from Lots of Lace, a fancy boutique on Broad Street in Charleston.

  Kitty B. grinned sheepishly, and they all started to laugh, and Sis pulled out a tube of K-Y Jelly that was hidden in the tissue paper behind the negligee. She handed it to Kitty B., who turned it round and round in her chubby hands as her cheeks began to redden. She looked up at Ray, her eyes glistening in the soft light of the bedside lamp.

  Hilda took another drag and exhaled the smoke, which hovered around Sis’s nodding head, and Peaches barked around the bed before nosing his way over to the window, where they spotted Fitz on all fours in his tan suit and penny loafers, shimmying across the roof toward them.

  “Speaking of frisky,” Hilda said. “Soldier boy’s here.”

  They all turned to look at Fitz, who stood up at the window, loosened his tie, and licked his lips so that they caught the light from the upstairs piazza. He straightened out his slick gold hair for one of the last times before the army would shave it and ship him off to Vietnam. He winked at the pack of gals in their nightgowns. “Go on,” Kitty B. said, squeezing Sis’s hand.

  “Okay.” Sis kissed Kitty B.’s forehead before climbing out of the window onto the roof.

  “Get to bed, girls,” Roberta called up the laundry chute.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hilda said before turning back to Kitty B. The orange tip of her cigarette flared as she inhaled. Then her eyebrows rose as she exhaled deeply before adding, “Now tomorrow we’ll just have to use the hot curlers. And we’ll fix your face and let you soak in a warm bath for a half hour so the makeup will set deep down in your pores.”

  “All right,” Kitty B. said, stroking the lace trim of her new nightie. Hilda walked over to the vanity, where she curled her own hair around the pink rollers before wrapping it in another Ace bandage.

  Then the three gals piled into Kitty B.’s king-size bed for the last night they’d all be huddled together on the same stepping-stone—young, hopeful virgins promised to their small-town sweethearts.

  At four in the morning, Ray awoke fully alert in bed. She lay perfectly still while Kitty B’s dog walked across the bodies of her sleeping friends. He made his way from the foot of the bed, sauntering up to the headboard, then lifted his hind leg to pee on Hilda’s bandaged curlers. Ray watched, detached, as a drowsy Hilda awakened, felt her wet curlers, put her fingers to her nose and shrieked.

  Hilda was gagging when she got to the bathroom, turned on the bright light, and unrolled her curlers over the trash can. Kitty B. rubbed her eyes before propping herself up on her elbow. “What happened?”

  “Peaches,” Ray said with a quiet grin before calling, “Are you okay, Hilda?”

  “No, Ray! No, I’m not okay! That filthy rodent peed on my head! ”

  Kitty B. giggled and scratched Peaches’ scruff. Ray threw off the covers and walked into the bathroom and started hot water running in the pink tiled tub. “Come on, Hilda. Just wash it out.”

  Fitz and Sis peered through the open window.

  “What’s going on?” Sis asked.

  “Peaches peed on Hilda’s head,” Kitty B. said.

  Sis and Fitz chuckled, and Ray couldn’t stop herself from chuckling, too, though she covered her lips with her hand. “Thanks a lot, y’all!” Hilda screamed. Then she pushed Ray out of the bathroom and slammed the door.

  “Listen, Kitty B.,” Fitz said through the window. “I’m real sorry I can’t be there tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, swatting in his direction. “Just bring yourself back in one piece for me, okay?”

  “He will.” Sis pulled him next to her. Then Mayor Hathaway tapped at the closed bedroom door. “Get back to sleep, girls,” he said.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Kitty B. said. “Now scoot,” she whispered to Sis and Fitz. “I’ll be back in a bit,” Sis whispered into the window and let Fitz lead her onto the far edge of the roof.

  By the time Hilda settled back in bed, Kitty B. was snoring lightly with Peaches beneath her forearm. From across the hall Mayor Hathaway blew a low and guttural sound through his nose that sounded like a cow’s moo. Ray was wide-eyed beneath the covers as a light breeze rustled the trees. She could hear the scrape of one of the great live oak limbs as it brushed against the white reception tent behind the house. Peaches stirred for a moment before repositioning himself with his head in the nook of Kitty B.’s neck. Fitz and Sis’s hushed whispers outside mixed with the soft snores and the crickets and the rustling of a raccoon or a water rat at the edge of Round-O Creek.

  Ray had a secret. She kneaded her engagement ring—a tasteful solitaire set in platinum that Willy’s mama had picked out from a fine jeweler in Savannah—around her finger with her thumb. This was her silent prayer: that who she was would stay tucked between her and the thick summer night.

  Then Ray closed her eyes and fell, finally, into sleep as the pale gray of daybreak crept like a steadily rising tide into the Hathaway home on the Third Avenue of Jasper.

  Mrs. Hilda Savage Prescottr />
  and Doctor Angus Addison Prescott IV

  request the honour of your presence

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Hilda Foster

  to

  Giuseppe Ricci Giornelli

  On Saturday, the thirteenth of August

  Two thousand and five

  at twelve o’clock

  All Saints Episcopal Church

  Jasper, South Carolina

  and afterwards at the reception

  at Pink Point Gardens

  ONE

  Ray

  ~ 2005 ~

  Ray sits in a hospital robe in the examination room of the Medical University of South Carolina’s Women’s Health Office thumbing through her wedding notes. Durn Hilda, she thinks. I ought to be home right now getting ready for her daughter’s Tea and See.

  It took three months for her to get an appointment with a gynecologist in Charleston, and the timing couldn’t be worse. It’s just days before Little Hilda’s wedding, and Ray has one million things to attend to. Tonight she’s meeting the gals to go over the final details, and tomorrow afternoon she will host the bridal tea and gift display at her home.

  A nurse pops her head in and says, “Dr. Arhundati will be with you shortly.”

  “Thank you,” Ray says as she wonders about the name Arhundati.

  As someone taps sharply on the door, Ray braces herself.

  A tall, young blonde enters the room, thrusts out her thin hand, and says, “I’m Melissa Arhundati.”

  “You look like you’re my daughter’s age,” Ray says as she puts down her latest Southern Living issue. “In fact, you look like a girl from Priscilla’s sorority. You didn’t happen to go to UVA, did you?” “No,” the doctor says. “I went to the University of Chicago, and I was not in a sorority.”

  “Oh,” Ray says. “It’s just—I was expecting a man.”

  “Well,” Dr. Arhundati says with a tight smile. “My husband is a physician, too, but I’m the only gynecologist in the family.” The doctor examines the paperwork Ray filled out in the waiting room. “Mrs. Montgomery, correct?”