The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  “Careful!” Ray says as Willy and Justin lug their rifle cases through the dining room. The tip of Justin’s case grazes a Blue Canton vase and a hideous red crystal decanter from that Texas come-yuh, Vangie Dreggs, which must have cost a small fortune.

  “Please watch yourselves, boys!” Ray clutches her cheeks while the glass display shelves shudder between their brass hinges. Three silver trays rattle back and forth, and a green Herund hare figurine crouched as if in a thicket falls over on its nose.

  “Think Jeannie lives in there, Aunt Ray?” Justin points to the decanter with a grin. Her fifteen-year-old nephew was described as s-l-o-w by the William Bull High guidance counselor before she sent him to the special needs school in Charleston. The look on his round face is so droll that she wants to kiss his forehead and rock him back and forth in her arms.

  “Even Jeannie wouldn’t be caught dead in that eyesore.” Ray gently pats his shoulders from behind and guides him toward the kitchen door.

  August 15 is the first day of deer hunting season in South Carolina, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Everything is set up for tomorrow’s tea, and the longer Ray can keep the boys out of the house, the better.

  “This is a big day, darlin’!” Willy beams at Ray while dancing toward the kitchen with the oblong case cocked on his shoulder. She watches her husband inching his way through the minefield of crystal and china.

  Willy’s a state senator just like his daddy was, although he doesn’t look a thing like Ray thinks a state senator should look. He’s stout with a stubby bald head and rough, nubby hands that look like they were made to pull watermelons off the vines instead of flipping through papers at the State House in Columbia. He’s like family to most folks around Jasper, so everyone from the mayor to their housekeeper calls him Cousin Willy.

  “How was the doctor, love?” Willy says.

  “Awful.” Ray rolls her eyes. “She’s got me taking herbs, of all things. I’m going back to Angus as soon as I get the nerve to tell Hilda.”

  Cousin Willy squeezes Justin’s shoulder and says, “What’s the rule, son?”

  “Just shoot bucks,” Justin leans in to Ray. “Those are the ones with bones on their heads.”

  “Racks,” Cousin Willy says.

  Ray nods, though her mind reels with wedding concerns. She’s got to pack her car with the birdseed and tulle for the meeting at Kitty B.’s. She hasn’t had a chance to talk to Angus, either—to let him know he and his girlfriend can’t sit on the same pew as Hilda, or she will simply lose it. She ought to double-check the forecast to make sure Eleanor doesn’t have her eye on Jasper.

  “The first deer rack of the season gets stuffed, right?” Justin says.

  “That’s right, son,” Willy winks. “I’ve got a place picked out right over my desk for that buck’s head.”

  “You mean right over my bed,” Justin says, pushing Willy’s forearm with his fist. Ray looks at them both and says, “Don’t forget my rule, hear?”

  Last year Willy and Justin had stopped by the house for a Co-Cola on their way from the deer hunt to the meat processor, and Ray pulled up from the grocery store to find a fat doe strapped to the top of the truck dripping blood through its open mouth onto her newly constructed slate driveway.

  As she stopped beside the truck to examine the mess, she looked up and spotted a buzzard out of the corner of her eye circling her home. She knew it was nature’s way, but she loathed the filthy creatures. They continually mar the pristine skyline with their large black wings and glossy eyes, scanning the salt marsh and the woods and roadside in search of the wounded and the dead.

  “Ray,” Cousin Willy called out to her. He was running toward her as the edges of her vision became fuzzy and her knees began to buckle. She let her groceries fall—eggs and all—and grabbed hold of the big metal mirror on the side of his truck as she fainted. He’d caught her and carried her into the house, where he laid her down on the couch, wet a cool dish rag, and rolled it up before placing it on her pale forehead.

  “I do not want to see the poor creature until he’s vacuum-sealed in loins and sausage links and neatly stacked in the freezer in the garage,” Ray says to them both, looking back and forth into their eyes.

  “Fair enough. We don’t want you fainting again, sweet lady.” Willy kisses her right on the lips before she has a chance to pucker.

  Tuxedo, their black Labrador retriever, paces back and forth. He’s seen the gun cases and knows that this means a trip to the country, where he’ll chase rabbits and field mice around the cabin as the men file out into their stands.

  As Justin calls Tuxedo into the flatbed, Cousin Willy adds, “Give my regards to the gals and LeMar.”

  “I will,” Ray says to the back of his thick, round head.

  In his camouflage and mud brown, knee-high snake boots, it seems for sure that her worst suspicions are confirmed: she married a redneck who just happened to be born into an old and well-regarded Jasper family. Or maybe he was switched at the hospital.

  Ray can’t understand how the men can sit in those stands for hours at a time in this sauna while the no-see-ums nibble on their scalp and the mosquitoes suck their blood. Not to mention the chiggers and ticks that are always rooting for a way in.

  “Willy,” Ray says, scurrying out to the back porch, the humid August heat hitting her square on with its weight. “Are you worried about this storm?”

  “Heck no, Ray.” He turns back to her. “They’re already predicting Myrtle Beach, and I’d be surprised if we saw a drop of rain from it.”

  “One more thing,” she says, grabbing the banister to steady herself in the thick heat. “If you see Angus, will you tell him that we’re going to seat him and his girlfriend or fiancée or whatever she is on the pew behind his former wife for his daughter’s wedding?”

  Cousin Willy swats Ray away. “Now you know it’s a cardinal sin to talk about weddings among men at a deer hunt, gal.”

  “Do I have to handle everything?” She lets the screen door slam behind her as she retreats back into the cool air-conditioning, heading back to the dining room to make sure all of the gifts are intact. Despite the knot in her stomach that precedes every social function she hosts, she takes comfort in knowing her dining room is the picture of southern elegance. She loves how her mother-in-law’s crystal chandelier dangles just above the silver cherub candelabra that once graced Mrs. Pringle’s dining room on the Battery in Charleston where Ray grew up. When Mrs. Pringle was sleeping or playing bridge with her friends in the parlor, Ray used to run her finger along the fat rolls on the legs of the baby angel who held up the four candleholder. Her distorted reflection stared back at her from the glint of the silver bowl as her mother stood behind her polishing the chafing dish with one of Mr. Pringle’s old undershirts and saying, “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  Tonight Ray will tape the drenched oasis inside of the silver bowl that sits on the top of the candelabra and fill it with the pale green hydrangeas, pink English garden roses, lilies of the valley, and extravagant lavender sweet peas that R.L., the local florist/antique dealer, delivered a few hours ago. The flowers are all soaking in their respective sugar water jugs in her kitchen—out of the direct sunlight, of course—as is the oasis which she’ll mold into every bowl and vase in the house with a similar arrangement. She’s even going to make an arrangement in a flat sweetgrass basket to hang on the front door and a round little pomander of pale green hydrangea with a sheer white ribbon for Little Hilda to hold as she greets the guests in the foyer.

  Ray is tempted to snip the last blossoms of gardenias growing secretly behind Cousin Willy’s shed. In her estimation they are the quintessential wedding flower, with their intoxicating fragrance and their delicate cream petals surrounded by those dark, waxy leaves. She bought the seedlings when R.L. and the gals weren’t looking at the Southern Gardener’s Convention in Atlanta four years ago, and no one has any idea she’s been growing them. Sometimes she worries that the fragrance will
give her away, but they bloom the same time as the confederate jasmine, which grows along the lattice work of the shed, and she can always blame the thick smell on them. It would take a truly trained nose to pick the gardenias out, and Ray possesses the trained nose of the bunch.

  She tends the gardenias in the early morning when the rest of the town is asleep. She is saving these blooms for Priscilla’s wedding, which she has been planning for decades now. It will truly be the most exquisite event Jasper has ever witnessed. A far cry from the meager reception that her mama pieced together in her backyard for Ray and Cousin Willy more than thirty years ago. Poor Mama had blown through Mrs. Pringle’s money by then, and it was all she could do to offer a little punch and a lopsided wedding cake, which she baked layer by layer over a week’s time in her small gas oven. It was an embarrassment in comparison to the elegant reception Roberta created for Kitty B.

  Now as Ray repositions the crystal vases on the top gift shelf, she can’t help but let her eye wander through the dining room window and across Third Street to Kitty B.’s old childhood home. The one where Peaches peed on Hilda’s curled hair and Sis and Fitz spent the night in the shadows of the rooftop over thirty-six years ago.

  ~ JUNE 8, 1969 ~

  Ray watched Roberta through the netting of her yellow bridesmaid’s pillbox cap. She wanted to record her every gesture so she could one day imitate them. Roberta’s white gloves were wrapped around the handle of the wide sweetgrass basket, and Ray marveled at how she could simultaneously pat her pale pink silk cap to keep her little extra boost of a hairpiece in place while offering the rice sacks to the wedding guests.

  Then Roberta had them all line up along the brick pathway that led to the sidewalk and Third Street, where Mayor Hathaway’s Lincoln Continental was parked, covered with shaving cream and a long string of Budweiser beer cans that stretched out for at least three yards. Angus and Willy’s work, no doubt.

  All of a sudden, Kitty B. appeared above their heads at the top of the piazza in a stunning going-away suit—a raw silk dress from Berlin’s with a double-breasted overcoat to match. The suit had wide yellow and chartreuse stripes and a yellow straw hat. LeMar joined her in a seersucker suit with a yellow and blue striped bow tie, the first layer of his double chin already spilling over the lip of a starched oxford collar. After a few hoots and hollers up to the newlyweds, Kitty B. threw her bridal bouquet down. It landed right in Sis’s outstretched hands—an old-fashioned cascade of white roses, stephanotis, and ivy cut from the vines that climbed the south side of the Hathaway home.

  As Ray tore open her tulle sack that day and poured a little rice in Cousin Willy and Sis’s cupped hands, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil LeMar Blalock trotted down the stairs and out into the green front lawn. The guests chased after them and threw rice at the tops of their heads. Mayor Hathaway’s driver, Enoch, waited by the car door to carry the newlyweds to the Sea Island resort on the Georgia coast.

  Ray tossed the rice and lifted her skirt to chase after the newlyweds, but she stopped after a few strides to take in their glorious exit as they scurried on the balls of their feet down the brick path. Kitty B. kissed her mama along the way, and then, all of a sudden, she slipped, and for a moment it looked as though she might not regain her balance from the white grains spinning beneath her chartreuse Pappagallo pumps. Then LeMar grabbed her gently by the elbow and steadied her just enough for her to regain her balance, and they ran for the car, where Enoch closed the door behind them.

  Sis chased after the car screaming with delight as the car moved slowly down Third Street, the Budweiser cans rattling behind them. Angus pulled Hilda close, and Hilda stepped away for decorum’s sake as her uptight father cleared his throat behind them. She cupped her blond curls, bouncing them in the palm of her manicured hands. Willy interlaced his stout fingers with Ray’s as Mayor Hathaway and Roberta stood arm in arm, waving to the silver Lincoln, the sunlight glinting off the hubcaps and the metal rearview mirror before it crossed over the railroad tracks, turned right onto Main, and drove out of sight.

  Before the salt marsh turned brown for the autumn that year and the first oysters of the season were harvested, Ray tied the knot with Willy, and Hilda did the same with Angus, and Sis wrote Fitz tender love letters addressed to his unit, though he’d stepped on a land mine in the Quang Tri Province by the time the first one arrived.

  Fitz came home just before Thanksgiving in a pine box draped in an American flag, and they buried him in the Hungerford family plot in the All Saints churchyard. Sis still takes a bouquet or a plant over to his gravestone on the anniversary they had set for their wedding—May 6, 1970.

  The front doorbell rings unexpectedly, and Ray is so caught off guard that she nearly loses her balance. Cousin Willy installed a new doorbell a few weeks ago that he bought on the cheap from one of those mega home stores in Columbia, and it rings from time to time on its own for no reason at all, which she finds quite disconcerting.

  Of course, it’s probably just R.L. with another shipment of flowers. She knows she ordered more lilies of the valley than he delivered. Or it could be Paley’s Jewelers with a new wedding gift for the display. Then again, it might be her overactive imagination, and the chimes have not sounded except for in her mind, where she longs to see one of the faces of her past: Roberta, Mama, Fitz, or Laura, her younger sister, who she hasn’t seen since she ran off two years ago with a fellow patient in her rehab clinic.

  By the time Ray gets to the foyer, her heart pounds like the bass drum in the William Bull High School marching band, and she braces herself as she opens the large maple front door. No one is standing on the front steps of her house, and as she peers out into the yard, all is quiet and still. Something must have triggered the bell—a delivery truck moving down the street or a squirrel scurrying across the gutters. The thick air fills her lungs, and she looks down at the bits and pieces of slate laid out in a semicircle at the bottom of her steps. The arc connects with a path that leads to her new driveway which is meant to look old. The slate is part of a collection she bought from the demolished roof of a plantation kitchen house in Bluffton. Each slat is laid out haphazardly around her steps and across her yard where gray cement seals them together—remnants that once covered a cook’s head two centuries ago.

  As a hot flash starts in the pit of her arms, she realizes she would have nothing—no past, no history, no identity whatsoever—if she wasn’t adept at taking hold of what scraps she could get her hands on and piecing them together in the guise of a whole. Not unlike a buzzard, she must admit, as she scans the skyline for the old opportunist. That one whose survival depends on the picking apart of a former life.

  THREE

  Ray

  Ray loads the back of her Volvo station wagon for her trip to Kitty B.’s: four pounds of birdseed, five rolls of tulle, pink satin ribbons, and a pot of creamed corn for LeMar, whose migraines are back for the third time this year. He was diagnosed a decade ago with chronic fatigue syndrome after an awful bout with the flu, and he hasn’t been back to work at Sally Swine since. He’ll be headed straight for another evaluation at the Medical University in Charleston after he sings the “Ave Maria” at Little Hilda’s wedding.

  “This is Senator Montgomery’s house.” Ray hears the loud, raspy voice and turns to see Vangie Dreggs on a golf cart, of all things, toting a sporty looking middle-aged couple down Third Street. Ray watches as Vangie pulls onto her slate driveway. She’s got that stout little Jack Russell in a basket on the backseat, and on the hood of her cart a magnetic advertisement reads, “Lone Star Lowcountry Realty” with a star-shaped photo of Vangie and her dog above her phone number and her Web site. Tacky.

  “Let me introduce y’all to the first lady of Jasper,” Vangie says to the couple. She turns back and gives Ray that big Texas smile, and Ray swears she’s seen horse’s teeth smaller than Vangie’s. “Hi there, Ray.” Vangie’s dog leaps out and starts sniffing around Ray’s ankles. “Getting everything just right for the Prescott wedding?
”

  Ray takes off her sunglasses and walks toward them. “Hello, Vangie.” She reaches out her hand to the strangers. “I’m Ray Montgomery.”

  Vangie stands up and straightens out her bright skirt and introduces the couple. “This is Tom and Janine Patterson from Toledo, Ohio.” The little dog makes a dart into the side yard, where he sniffs around Tuxedo’s pen.

  “Pleased to meet y’all,” Ray says as Tom Patterson squeezes her hand more tightly than necessary. Janine does the same and Vangie slaps Ray on the back and says, “Tom and Janine are in the market for a second home, and they’re more interested in a small town than something along the beach—so here we are.”

  The print on Vangie’s skirt sways with her wide hips. It’s hot pink with monkeys climbing from limb to limb drinking out of martini glasses.

  “Have you shown them those new condominiums on the Cumbahee?” Ray says.

  “Why, yes I have.” Vangie swats her glossy nails in their direction as the gold bangles on her wrist clamor together. “But they’re more interested in old homes and a small-town flavor, so I’m taking them down to the end of Third Street to see the old Mims home.”

  “Sis’s mama has put her house on the market?” Ray can’t help but wince.

  “Well, yes, Ray. She’s been living at that Episcopal Retirement Community for two years now.”

  “Oh, I know, but I always thought—”

  The dog runs back and scrapes his muddy paws on Mr. Patterson’s khaki pants. “Down, Little Bit!” Vangie snaps. She picks him up and apologizes, and Ray decides not to finish her sentence. But what she always thought was that Mrs. Mims would leave the house to Sis, who would move out of her apartment on Main and be closer to her and Hilda, who lives just around the corner.

  Mr. Patterson beats the dirt off his pants, and Mrs. Patterson smiles sincerely at Ray. “Jasper sure is quaint.”

  Before Ray forms a response, Vangie Dreggs collects Little Bit and her clients, pulls out of Ray’s driveway, and turns toward Sis’s childhood home down the block.