The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  Hilda couldn’t be more proud of her or more shocked that she is no longer a child. She can feel the unfamiliar pinprick of tears below the surface, but they won’t come.

  “Almost, sweetheart,” she says, turning slowly around on her vanity stool to face her daughter. Hilda looks toward her room to make sure that the door is closed. It’s a funny thing, but no one has been in her bedroom since Angus left. She doesn’t even let Richadene go in there to clean, and she keeps it locked when she’s not home. She’s spent some dark nights between those four walls, and for some reason it is important for her to seal it off from the rest of the world like a tomb.

  “Mom, you’re still in your bathrobe,” Little Hilda says. “Giuseppe’s going to be here in ten minutes. What can I do to help you?”

  “Oh, you two can go on without me. I’ll be right behind you.” She swivels back around and unrolls the hot curlers in her hair.

  Now Hilda feels her daughter’s hands on her shoulders. She wants to turn back and pull Little Hilda into her lap and tell her how very much she loves her and how she wishes her all of the happiness in the world, but she doesn’t. Instead she straightens up and starts rubbing her Clinique moisturizer on her face.

  “Mama, I know this isn’t easy,” Little Hilda says, softly squeezing her mama’s shoulders. “But I know you can get through this weekend. I really need you to make it through, okay?” Little Hilda takes a deep breath, and Hilda watches the pearls rise and fall across her collarbone. A crooked vein in the center of her daughter’s glowing forehead has surfaced, and she knows it must be hard for her to tell her own mama to pull herself together and “deal”—as she would put it—at least for the next three days.

  Hilda nods and looks down at her containers of makeup. She meant to allow time for a bath so she could soak the foundation into her pores, but she was distracted with painting her toenails. She has to do this herself now! Then she’d seen a little crease in her silk suit that needed ironing.

  “Don’t worry,” Hilda says, as she watches herself in the mirror’s reflection, reaching up to take hold of Little Hilda’s hands. The liver spots across her knuckles surprise her, and she realizes that her hands are aging and looking more and more like her mother’s each day, with dark brown splotches and prominent veins that snake across the surface like a topographic map. Well, at least she’s not her mother on her own wedding weekend, that is to say, catatonic. Hilda’s mother and father were still together, but he had her holed up on the mental ward at the Medical University of South Carolina, and it wouldn’t be long before he signed off on her lobotomy. Sometimes Hilda suspects that her mother actually faked her craziness just to get away from him.

  Like her mama, Hilda always has a lit cigarette nearby, its smoke ascending now from the crystal ashtray on the vanity. It rises, then curls before dissipating into the thick air like the minutes that ticked by as she counted down the long-awaited exit out of the sad, dark home of her childhood.

  She can’t help but wonder if Little Hilda prays the same way she once did—God, get me out of this nut house and get me on with my life. That’s exactly how Hilda felt when she married Angus. Their union was her freedom. Her ticket out of hell.

  ~ SEPTEMBER 6, 1969 ~

  Hilda tried to sprint down the aisle to the kind and handsome medical student beaming at the other end. Her high school sweetheart. But every time she lurched forward toward the altar, her father pulled her back.

  “Take your time,” he murmured; then he tilted his head toward one of the mill executives who was seated on the bride’s side of the church and nodded. A whole group of the executives had flown down from New York for the wedding, and they had presented Hilda with the most extravagant gifts: a hand-cut crystal ice bucket from Austria, five place settings of her finest china, and four square sterling silver candelabras from Tiffany’s that weighed more than the dumbbells Angus used to lift in the weight room of the high school gymnasium.

  Angus was grinning from ear to ear that day as Hilda’s father placed her hand in his, and when he felt the soft touch of her white gloved fingers, tears literally rolled down his full, flushed cheeks. She knew he was full of hope about their life together, so sure it would be as idyllic as his own parents’ marriage.

  Hilda’s father cleared his throat as if to say, “Pull yourself together, boy,” and she even squeezed her intended’s hand and lifted her chin high behind her veil like a bothered nanny to let him know he’d need to collect himself to get through the vows.

  Hilda guesses that describes her marriage in a nutshell—Angus gushing with emotion and her striking a stiff posture behind a veil. As she stares back at the reflection of her daughter standing behind her, she thinks of the time Angus saw an adolescent alligator skulking through their backyard and he called Cousin Willy. Those two went outside and wrestled it down and hung it on the tree until Marvin’s Meats came by to pick it up for processing. It was one of the biggest fights she’d ever had with him, needling him about why they had to hang the creature in their yard instead of Ray and Willy’s.

  “For one thing, it came onto our property, Hilda,” he said. “And for another, we only have one child to keep away from it, and they have three.” Laura had run away for the first time by then, and Ray was looking after Justin too.

  Thing is, Angus wanted more children, and he couldn’t understand why Hilda didn’t. It was the first real wedge between them.

  “I want a family,” he said many a night, cuddling up to her, stroking the back of her head. “I want brothers and sisters for Little Hilda. I want to fill up every bedroom in this big old house, and I want to wake up to the sound of several pairs of bare feet on the staircase. Don’t you?”

  It was all too easy to roll away from him and curl up into herself beneath the sheets like she did when she was a child. He would fall back on his pillow and sigh, but the next day he would greet her sweetly with a kiss in the kitchen and a pat on her satin shrouded elbow, and they would sit at the breakfast table admiring their daughter as his spoon knocked around the edges of the coffee mug so that the sugar dissolved in the blackness.

  Looking back, Hilda sees that she was pretty good at giving him the cold shoulder. At shutting down whenever he reached out with the slightest suggestion of physical affection. Not to mention his plea for them to “go see someone.” I mean, really. How horrifying would that be?

  The truth is that she never would have had Hilda in the first place if he hadn’t caught her in a weak moment with one too many glasses of champagne one New Year’s Eve.

  She was more than terrified of being a parent. Her mother had done a horrendous job, and she had no model to follow and no desire to bring an innocent life into this world where the nights are long and painful.

  Sure, she wanted to relax like the rest of their pack and just get on with life, like Kitty B. and Ray, their own bellies swelling with watermelons alongside hers that year. But relaxing never seemed to happen for Hilda. She had the dearest, easiest husband imaginable, but she never could let go and enjoy him—not during sex, not during talks late at night on the back piazza, not during walks along the seawall—she just couldn’t.

  Of course, she’s glad she had Little Hilda. She loves her more than anything, and she’s sorry that she’s caused her distress over these last few years. She knows Little Hilda worries about her. Ray and Kitty B. and Sis tell her that Little Hilda calls one of them each week to check on her. When Angus left, Little Hilda wrote her several times, telling her that she loved her and that she wished Hilda would come stay with her a while in Washington, but Hilda couldn’t do that either. She couldn’t walk out of her house, not even into her yard, so how could she get on an airplane and fly through the air to an unfamiliar city?

  Hilda squeezes her daughter tight. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready.”

  “Ten minutes, okay? I don’t want you to go alone, and we really shouldn’t keep Father Campbell and the wedding party waiting.”

  Hilda makes
up her face quickly and puts on this ivory silk suit she’d bought over the phone from Neiman Marcus. Thank goodness for the sizeable inheritance her father left her.

  The jacket is perfectly tailored with three-quarter sleeves and a thin, flat bow belt, and the skirt is straight with the most delicate flounced hem encircling her knees. She puts on her twisted strands of small seeded pearls as a perfect final touch and slips on the open-toe bronze heels that she and Sis picked out at Bob Ellis Shoes last weekend.

  As Hilda walks down her elegantly curved staircase, her daughter and her future husband smile up at her.

  “You did it!” Little Hilda says, and she claps her hands lightly together.

  “Wow, Mrs. Prescott.” Giuseppe grins, and even Hilda has to admit he’s a knockout. He’s got dark hair, olive skin, and bright pools of blue eyes with a dark blue ring encircling them. It’s easy to see why Little Hilda crossed the hall on Capitol Hill to get a better look at him, despite his alien status as a Yankee, a first-generation immigrant, and most foreign of all, a liberal.

  Well, he’s sure embraced her despite their differences, and it’s charming to see him decked out in full southern summer attire: a seersucker suit and a red bow tie printed with the South Carolina state flag.

  Giuseppe narrows his eyes and reaches out to embrace his future mother-in-law, and she moves with precision to return his affection so as not to upset her hair or smear her champagne-colored lipstick.

  “You look beautiful,” he says while Little Hilda beams behind them, as if all is well, as if her wedding weekend will run smoothly after all.

  Angus greets Hilda at the church door with a measured smile.

  “You look nice,” he says, then he puts his hand out as if his ex-wife is a wedding guest and he is honored to meet her. Hilda stares at the familiar pads of his fingers for a moment, then walks past him toward the altar, where Capers and Ray gesture for the wedding party to gather around for their instructions. Sis turns and waves to Hilda from her organ perch in the balcony above the church doors, and she nods back, thankful to see a friendly face.

  Hilda hasn’t stepped inside this church for over four years. She stopped coming after Angus left, though she knew he switched over to Trudi’s Baptist church on the outskirts of town where there is no Tiffany stained glass window and no incense and no port wine poured into silver chalices for the sacrament. Talk about uncivilized!

  Angus and Hilda were married at this very altar just over twenty-eight years ago beneath the ornate brass cross and the Ten Commandments chiseled in the marble panels behind it. And Little Hilda was christened at the baptismal font on the left side of the altar along with Priscilla the winter after their birth. That was a bittersweet ceremony, since Kitty B. and LeMar had buried Baby Roberta two months earlier.

  ~ FEBRUARY 24, 1980 ~

  Hilda peered out through the north side window during her daughter’s baptism at the stone that marked Baby Roberta’s grave—a small, rectangular outline with a fresh patch of grass in the center and a square frame at its head where an angel knelt above the name and the date of her very short life: Roberta Ferguson Hathaway, October 14, 1980–December 20, 1980.

  The rectangular stones reminded Hilda of an empty bassinet, and her knees buckled at the thought of it as she stood before the baptismal font the morning of Little Hilda’s christening.

  It was Little Hilda’s shrill cry after Old Stained Glass poured the cold water across her forehead that pulled Hilda’s back to the ceremony. Baby Roberta was supposed to be christened with Hilda and Ray’s daughters that day. They had decided upon a triple baptism, and Hilda quietly broke down the day the invitations arrived with Baby Roberta’s name etched in the center of them. She immediately called the stationery store and asked them to reprint them. Then she asked Richadene to watch over her baby while she took the old invitations out to the backyard and burned them in a metal trash can, spearing them with the poker from her fireplace until every last piece of the embossed crosses and the names and the dates had turned to ash.

  As Hilda takes her place in the mother-of-the bride pew, she hears the shuffle of feet on the slate aisle, and out of the corner of her eye she feels someone staring at her. When she turns, she sees it is Dodi, her ex-husband’s girlfriend’s daughter and the junior bridesmaid of the wedding party. Dodi bites the inside of her chubby cheek as she stares Hilda down. Hilda shakes her head in disapproval and turns to watch Giuseppe’s relatives file in behind her, speaking in hushed Italian words.

  When Dodi turns to talk to one of the acolytes, Hilda glances back and studies her. Her dull brown hair is curled in ringlets, and she’s wearing a pale shade of lipstick and dangly, rhinestone earrings that are far too old for her. What is she, nine or ten? She’s in an iridescent green full-length dress that looks like it was made for a 1980s prom, and she has these bushy black eyebrows that would put Brooke Shields to shame. Hilda looks around for Trudi, who ought to be appalled at how tacky her child is dressed, but she is nowhere to be seen. Hilda smirks at the possibility of having run her off from this gathering.

  Now Ray, a patch over her black, swollen eye, directs everyone to the proper pews. She’s decked out in a tailored pink linen suit with her mother-in-law’s pearl hummingbird on her lapel. Hilda can’t believe the stamina Ray has. If Hilda had hit a deer, she’d still be lying in bed with ice packs on her face.

  “The south side is for the groom’s family and the north side for the bride’s,” Ray calls. Vangie Dreggs stands like an unwanted shadow directly behind Ray. Naturally, she wants to join the Wedding Guild, and it is Ray’s charge to show her the ropes.

  Hilda turns back to greet her future in-laws, Anatole and Fiorella Giornelli. Now try saying that three times without getting your tongue tied!

  “Hello,” she says as Fiorella squeezes her hand and Anatole winks.

  Hilda’s not exactly fond of the pair after they put pressure on Little Hilda to convert to Catholicism before the wedding. It just annoys her to death how the Catholics think they’re the only ones bound for heaven. How they don’t even invite her, a descendant of a long line of landed-gentry Episcopalians, to their communion table because they think all non-Catholics are out-and-out doomed to hell! It really infuriates Hilda, and she is proud of Little Hilda for saying no, and of Giuseppe for standing behind her choice.

  Just as Hilda tries to think of something else to say to the Giornellis, Capers shouts, “The Lord be with you,” which means he is ready to get this show on the road.

  God bless Sis. She’s had to coordinate musical efforts with LeMar and two of the Giornellis’ cousins, one who is a baritone and the other who is a trumpeter. The trumpeter’s flight from New York to Charleston was cancelled this afternoon due to tropical storm Eleanor, and no one knows if he’ll make it or not. The baritone, who has performed at the Met among other impressive venues, has a marriage partner of the same sex who is a dentist. Hilda was informed about this by Giuseppe and Little Hilda just a few weeks before they mailed the invitations, and the gals just about pulled their hair out trying to determine the etiquette of how to address his wedding invitation. Since Hilda is not only the seamstress of the bunch, but also the gal with the most elegant penmanship, they gathered at her house to go over the list, and Ray even checked out updated versions of Emily Post’s Etiquette and Crane’s Blue Book of Stationery from the library to see how they should address the invitation.

  They didn’t know if they should do Dr. and Mr. or Mr. and Doctor or The Misters or Mr. such and such and Mr. such and such. Quite a quandary, Hilda thought before settling on Dr. __ and Mr. __. Now why hasn’t Emily Post addressed this yet?

  As Hilda walks to the back of the church to take her place for the practice of the processional, she sees LeMar practicing his scales up in the balcony. He keeps squeezing his thick hands into fists, and Hilda can guess that he doesn’t want to be completely upstaged in his own church by a pro who has performed at the Met. Sis has met with him several times over the last f
ew weeks to practice his “Ave Maria” solo.

  Hilda takes Cousin Willy’s arm when she reaches the back of the church. He has agreed to walk her down the aisle for the seating of the mothers. Her husband has divorced her, her father is long dead, and she hasn’t talked to her brother for decades, so she appreciates Ray’s offering her husband’s arm to escort her in and out. They haven’t always had the smoothest of friendships, but Hilda is grateful to Ray for coordinating this wedding and looking out for her.

  Sis starts to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and Ray waves Fiorella and Hilda on down the aisle. Willy pats Hilda’s hand as they walk. He smells like Ivory soap and toothpaste, and his nose is as clean and shiny as the hood of his pickup truck on a Sunday afternoon after he washes and waxes it.

  “Thank you,” Hilda says to him as she keeps her eye on the familiar altar.

  “My pleasure, gal,” he says.

  SEVEN

  Hilda

  After Ray walks the wedding party through the processional and Capers takes the couple through the vows, everyone steps out into the warm summer evening where a brisk wind means rain and likely a little nip from Eleanor.

  Trudi Crenshaw waits in her bright yellow Volkswagen beneath a limb of an old live oak to take Angus and her daughter from the church to the dinner. Hilda watches them from the church steps as Angus opens the door and lifts back the seat to let the child in as the wind tousles a clump of Spanish moss that lands on the bright roof of the car.

  Angus sits down gently next to his girlfriend and leans over to give her a kiss. She grins from ear to ear as if she couldn’t be more pleased to be with him, the lifesaver of Jasper County. The man who binds up the broken arms and legs of accident-prone children and gives bags of free medicine samples to the poorest and the elderly who are burdened with all kinds of sickness and pain. She’s one lucky duck is all Hilda can say. He is the catch of the town, no doubt about it.