The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  “See you later, First Lady,” she says as Ray curls her slender fingers into tight fists. “By the way, we’ve got to meet about the Healing Prayer Revival Day before the next vestry meeting. The Reverend says he needs you to get behind it!” Vangie turns to the Pattersons and points to Ray. “She’s the senior warden of that beautiful old Episcopal church on the corner. It’s a little behind the times, but we’re catching up, right, Ray?”

  Ray shakes her head. Healing prayer? The Mims home going as a second residence to a couple from Toledo? Just the thought of it all makes another knot form in her gut, and she feels like she’s been punched in the stomach by Vangie Dreggs in her hot pink drunken monkey skirt. As Ray slips into her car, she realizes Vangie is more than just a come-yuh or a Lone-Star nuisance. She doesn’t think she’s overreacting to say that Vangie poses a downright threat to the protection and preservation of the town Ray loves, and she is not above planning a scheme to run her horse-toothed fanny out.

  It’s a twenty-five mile drive from Jasper to Kitty B.’s house at the tip of Cottage Island, where Ray will squeeze chronically infirm LeMar’s hand and lead the final planning meeting for the wedding that will be here in four short days. She let Big Hilda, the mother of the bride, off the hook tonight since her contribution of addressing the invitations and altering the wedding gown are done, and they all know she’ll be lucky to make it through the week without falling apart or retreating behind the wrought iron gates of her overgrown fortress where the thick vines of the Lady Banksia roses curl over her garden walls like the barbed wires at the top of the Beaufort County Detention Center.

  Angus finally called it quits on Hilda three years ago on the grounds that she had become positively impossible to live with, much less love. She took it so bad that she didn’t leave her house for nearly two years, and the gals had to sneak in on the heels of their mutual housekeeper, Richadene, after the first few months to make sure she was still alive.

  ~MARCH 4, 2004 ~

  Hilda stood at her front door, gathering the nerve to step out and over her property line. It had been twenty months since Angus walked out.

  “It’s time,” Ray said as she patted Hilda’s back. “You’ve got to do this.”

  Hilda looked pale, but she was dressed to the nines in a creamy silk pantsuit she’d ordered over the telephone from Doncaster. Her frosted hair was molded into a shoulder-length bob with what appeared to be one enormous under curl that circled her neck like a brace.

  Ray cleared her throat, and Hilda nodded once and reached out her thin arms. Kitty B. took hold of her left hand and Sis took hold of her right, and Ray swatted a broom at the spiderwebs at the front door and the voracious fig vines that were all but taking over across the threshold and around the porch columns.

  When Hilda stepped out onto the sidewalk, the light of Third Street hitting her square on the face, she raised her bejeweled wrist to her forehead and said, “What I really want is an oyster po’ boy from Opal Dowdy’s.”

  And that’s exactly where Ray drove them—four well-dressed ladies in their pearls and Ferragamos and decade-old Louis Vuitton purses. They didn’t know if she’d want to go antiquing in Charleston or for tea in Savannah, so they had to be dressed for anything.

  They crammed their middle-age hips into a plastic booth, sipping sweet tea and munching on oyster po’ boys at Opal’s. They weren’t halfway through their lunch before Trudi Crenshaw, who Angus had just started dating at the time, walked right in with a sidewalk order for two. The poor gal turned white as a ghost when she spotted Hilda, who the town had deemed an official recluse by that time.

  Opal’s waitress called out, “Two chili cheeseburgers for you and the doc, Miss Trudi. That’s four seventy-five.” Ray noticed Hilda’s back stiffen at the realization that the rumor was true—her husband was dating her hairdresser’s sister. He was the only doctor in town.

  Angus had always been fond of Trudi Crenshaw—the short and tubby manicurist with thick, smooth hands like catcher’s mitts. Hilda used to make him an appointment with her once a month, and Cousin Willy teased him mercilessly about it.

  Hilda stared Trudi down that day. Trudi’s eyes widened with fear, and she threw a ten-dollar bill at Opal and raced out the door, her fleshy breasts heaving beneath her purple V-neck sweater dress and her cheap rhinestone sandals smacking the sidewalk. Hilda unfolded a napkin and laid it gently over her half-eaten po’ boy and said to the gals, “Take me home, y’all.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ray sees R.L. waving from behind the glass of his “Flowers and Antiques” shop. She waves back before she crosses the railroad tracks and turns onto Highway 17.

  Missy Meggett, the mail lady, honks behind the wheel of her mud-encrusted candy red Jeep, the one she had specially made with the steering wheel on the wrong side. Ray presses the brake and rolls down her window.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Montgomery. I’ve got two packages for Little Hilda. I’ll put them behind the azalea bush by your front door.”

  “Thank you, Missy. No one’s home right now.”

  “I figured,” she says. “Hope Justin gets a buck today!”

  “I’d be happy just to get him back in one piece,” Ray says before rolling up the window and pulling back on the old road.

  Ray loves her town. Some days she does feel like the First Lady of Jasper, and like Cousin Willy says, they have more blessings than she can shake a stick at. So why is she prone to such fits of fretfulness as of late? Why does she feel so undone? The question itself makes her gut tighten as she heads down Highway 17, past Crenshaw’s Beauty Salon, the Old Post Gas Station, Po’ Pigs Bar-b-que, and the propane shop where the letters on the marquee read, “Ready for Eleanor?”

  Maybe the fretfulness is over Little Hilda’s wedding and all of the responsibility that comes with running Jasper’s new generation of wedding directors. Roberta’s last living comrades do have their eyes on Ray. Or maybe it’s the fibroid tumors or the menopause in general. As her stomach continues to tighten, the avenue of live oaks on the road before her becomes fuzzy.

  When Ray turns onto Route 172, the road becomes even more country looking. Garbage is heaped in the driveway of a mobile home set on cinderblocks, and a pile of wood is burning in front of a shack. The white, gnarled limbs of a dead oak tree are reaching up out of the salt marsh like a disfigured hand.

  Christmas lights are strung around one of the mobile homes, and those cheap red bows that you buy at Wal-Mart are mashed flat along the metal railing of a tin porch. Ray wonders why some country folks keep them up all year long. Is it because they’re too weary to take the ten minutes to take them down, or do they just not want to acknowledge the fact that Christmas has come and gone?

  As Ray spots two men in camouflage climbing over a fence with rifles, she thinks of Cousin Willy and Justin who are somewhere back in these jungle-like woods. Angus has some land on Rantowles Creek where the guys hunt every evening that they can between now and the close of the season, December 31.

  She pictures them now, up in the tall green tree stands, sweating in their camouflage and boots. They sit up there for hours without making a move, watching intently as the sun dips down in the trees and the creatures bedded down all day rouse themselves. It’s dusk when the bucks come out to feed and move about. Willy says you can’t hear them coming unless they’re fighting over a doe, locking their racks together in their battle to mate. More often than not, they just appear as if out of nowhere sniffing through their black snouts before bending down to nibble on the millet and the corn. If the boys don’t have a clear shot, they let them go. And if they shoot them, then someone must eat them. It’s the hunter’s creed around here. It’s awfully noble, but Ray must admit there is only so much venison she can stomach.

  When Ray arrives at Kitty B.’s, LeMar is rocking on the wraparound porch, listening to an opera. The living room window is open—no air-conditioning at Kitty B.’s since it was her parent’s old island house and hasn’t been the lea
st bit updated. All Ray can say is thank heavens there is a breeze off the water.

  The music pours out between the yellowed linen drapes as the powdery dirt from the road fills into her open-toe espadrilles, and she can feel its soft heat beneath the balls of her feet.

  Kitty B. has set out their mascot at the bottom of her front porch steps—a garden statue of a bashful girl holding a basket of flowers. Roberta bought that for the gals the summer that Priscilla, Little Hilda, and Baby Roberta were born within a three-month span of one another, if you can believe that! She thought it would be fun to set the statue out at every rite of passage: their christenings, their confirmations, their cotillions, their graduations, their debutante balls, and now, their weddings.

  Hilda has made bonnets and dresses for Miss C., the statue, to wear all along, and today she’s decked out in the most precious little child-sized wedding dress and veil for the big weekend. Miss C. gets her name from a Tuscaloosa girl who went to Converse with Kitty B. and Sis. Her actual first name was “Miss Cotton”—no lie. It was on her birth certificate and the passport she took on their trip to Europe their junior year. Miss Cotton was a high maintenance, plantation wielding princess like you might expect.

  But in an unexpected turn of events which can most succinctly be described as having the hots for her college philosophy professor, Miss C. became all wrapped up in the feminist movement and the general social revolution of the 1960s, and last the gals heard, she had married a Native American sculptor from the mountains of Western North Carolina and resides somewhere outside of Asheville where she sells sun-dried vegetables. But her name was just so southern, and so were her parents and so was her debutante ball which they all attended, pre-philosophy professor, that Miss C. just seemed like the perfect name for a mascot. Anyhow, it is part of their ritual to add something new to Miss C. each time someone hosts a wedding- related event, and Kitty B. has added some of LeMar’s pink baby bud roses in Miss C.’s flower basket.

  Now one of Kitty B.’s mutts, Otis, sniffs under Miss C.’s dress, leaving smudges and black hair on the lace of the white eyelet train. Honey, the yellow lab, who belongs to their “just going to live at home and sponge off of my parents” daughter, Katie Rae, roots around in LeMar’s famous sweetheart rosebush that stretches as high as the second story of their old home. Honey digs and digs until the grass becomes soft dirt, then he pees right in the hole as Otis comes over and pees on top of his puddle. Rhetta, the third in a string of unkempt poodles since the days of Peaches, is rolling back and forth over some leaves on the front lawn.

  “Rolling in crap,” LeMar says. “Well, that about sums it all up, don’t you think, Ray?”

  Ray chuckles, then she spots Sis down by the dock with her sandals dangling from her fingertips. She’s peering out over the Ashepoo River as the wake of a passing motorboat sends dark swells toward her. Poor Sis, Ray thinks. She’s never married, but she’s way too youthful and cute to be considered an old maid.

  Ray sits down in the chair next to LeMar with the watermelon on her lap. She can smell chicken frying.

  “What are we listening to?”

  “Salome,” he says. “Richard Strauss.”

  “Mmm,” she says, though the music seems unexpectedly thorny and her gut begins to tighten again. Salome? Where has she heard that name before? The Bible, perhaps. Maybe the Old Testament? Or is that Samson she’s thinking of, the man whose might was diminished after a haircut by his seductress, Delilah? Sometimes Ray thinks the Bible has more smut than a soap opera.

  “How are you feeling, LeMar?” Ray pats the top of his hand.

  He rolls his head slowly back and forth like he’s warming up for an aerobics class. He’s dressed in the tan garden suit he wears every afternoon while he fiddles with the rosebush and pokes at a few geraniums in the rusting window boxes.

  The dogs chase Mr. Whiskers—a tail-less stray cat that Kitty B. has adopted—into the tree. LeMar nods in the direction of the kitchen and says, “My wife’s killing me.”

  Ray’s eyes widen as she thinks how to respond. Ever since Baby Roberta’s death, there has been this wedge between LeMar and Kitty B., and it’s a wonder their marriage hasn’t gone the way of Hilda and Angus’s.

  “I don’t think I would have this syndrome if it weren’t for her,” he adds, rubbing his right temple.

  “Oh, come now, LeMar.” Ray pats his hand. “That’s not true, and you know it. Kitty B. loves you, and she would do anything to make you well.”

  He leans in toward her and says, “Listen. Salome is about to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.”

  Ray listens to the fitful music to humor him as the dogs bark up at the cat that is perched on the highest limb of the magnolia tree. A soprano sounds over the different sections of the orchestra, which seem to purposefully play apart from one another. The effect is confusion. The tone is fretful or worse. LeMar listens intently with his eyes closed and his lips pursed. He sniffs as if to ingest the notes.

  “Hey there, Ray,” Kitty B. says as she steps out onto the porch. Ray rises to kiss her old friend on the cheek as the dogs run up to greet their keeper. They lick the powdered sugar off Kitty B.’s soft fingertips as she takes a seat in a rocking chair. Then she kisses them on the mouths, their round pink tongues slapping her full, fleshy chin. Ray watches as Kitty B. wipes her sleeve on her untucked blouse. The tail-less cat tiptoes across the top of the porch rail and jumps onto Kitty B.’s lap. He turns toward the dogs and hisses, and they run off the porch and back into the yard, where they growl and bite at sticks and roll back and forth in the mud and leaves and crap.

  LeMar shakes his head in something between disgust and resignation.

  “Chicken’s ready, sweetheart,” Kitty B. says to him. “And I made you some deviled eggs and potato salad too.”

  “My wife thinks there’s nothing Duke’s Mayonnaise can’t cure,” LeMar says as he picks at a paint chip on the porch railing.

  “And I brought creamed corn,” Ray says. “And a watermelon.”

  “That’s all I want,” LeMar says, as he crumples the chalky chip between his thumb and forefinger. “Some of Ray’s creamed corn and a slice of watermelon.”

  “Oh, nonsense.” Kitty B. shakes her head and smiles earnestly at Ray. She scrubs the scruff of the feline who has settled in the depths of her lap. He begins to purr.

  “See,” LeMar says to Ray, “she thinks because the headaches are back I should eat and be merry, for tomorrow I will—”

  “No, LeMar,” Kitty B. says in a hushed tone. “It’s a summer night and my best friends are coming over for dinner and a meeting, and I wanted to make them a decent meal.”

  “You understand what I mean?” LeMar says to Ray while he eyes Kitty B. hard.

  “Hi, Ray!” Sis calls, midway down the soft dirt path that leads to the water. She runs barefoot toward the house, a cloud of dust rising behind her, and Ray has never been more relieved to see her.

  What astounds Ray most as Sis scurries toward them is how her dear friend appears to have hardly aged at all. Her soft black bob shows no sign of gray, and she’s still got that terrific little figure—those thin ankles and that cinched waist and those perky well-proportioned breasts that seem immune to gravity itself. She must wear the same size she wore in high school! It’s like time has stood still for Sis Mims. As if someone sealed her in the PVC pipe the town council used for a time capsule in their 250th anniversary of the founding of Jasper last fall, along with the church cookbook and the minutes of the town hall meeting and a photo of all of the children sitting on a joggling board in front of Mayor Whaley’s house.

  Sis’s youthfulness strikes Ray as eerie sometimes. Granted, Sis is the only one among them to have had a hysterectomy thus far. But she bounced right back like nothing ever happened. Except for the blue pills that her gynecologist prescribed for her. She calls them her happy pills, and she shakes them like a maraca when Hilda rants about Trudi Crenshaw or Ray complains about her fibroid
tumors or Poop 1 or Poop 2. “Ya’ll really ought to try these antidepressants,” she says. “They have jump-started my life !”

  Thing is, Ray cannot believe that Sis never married. Never had children. Never had sex, as far as she knows. Never had her offspring throw up or poop on her or grab for her breast in a feeding frenzy.

  All she’s really had is her music. The piano and the church organ and her students. They’ve set her up tens of times, with relatives and work associates and any single man they can get their hands on, but it never seems to work out. Ray hopes the new Episcopal priest, the Reverend Capers Campbell IV, will be Sis’s match. Honestly, it was one of the reasons she voted that All Saints hire him. She wants Sis to experience a little more of the companionship she’s yearned for since Fitz, and Rev. Capers couldn’t do any better if he searched the state over.

  Kitty B.’s house is a wreck as usual. There are bills and magazines and old newspapers scattered across the coffee table and black dog hair on the upholstery and the corners of the room. No, she is not blessed with any sense of domestic order, and Ray knows Roberta would have a fit if she saw the way her daughter lived, with the Hathaway family’s old summer home rotting right before their eyes and LeMar whining and picking paint chips on the sloping front porch. Not to mention their youngest, Katie Rae, stroking her parrot up in her room with no college degree and no plan to ever leave home or get a job.

  But despite the chaos, Kitty B. is the best durn baker the town has ever known. She bakes all of the cakes and sweets for the town’s social events, and she headed up the church cookbook publication, Lowcountry Manna, a few years back. That book made so much money for the parish that the vestry was able to put a new tin roof on the sanctuary and the rectory. Kitty B. has won numerous pie and cake contests across the southeast, and her lemon squares and hummingbird cakes were featured in Southern Living’s special baking issue two years ago.