Willa by Heart

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”

  I write that in my notebook. “The journey-work of the stars.”

  I think of stars as stationary. I know people see them fall, but I have never seen one move. I can’t wait to buy Leaves of Grass so I can write in it, make it my own.

  Sam picks up another book from his desk. There’s a frayed string hanging from the spine. Another well-worn, well-loved book. “My other summer friend,” Sam says.

  He is silent for a few seconds. We watch him, waiting.

  “Thoreau’s Walden,” he says, tapping the book’s cover like he’s applauding it, now gently stroking it like a beloved pet. “I once thought of following in Thoreau’s footsteps, going off and living alone in the woods to search my soul. I was burned out from teaching in an overcrowded school. My wife and son had died in a car crash the year before …”

  The new girl, Shefali, gasps. She didn’t know that about Sam.

  “… and I was desperate to find some meaning in my life.” Sam slides his reading glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He looks so handsome and distinguished. I look around the room. Do you all realize this man is my father?

  Sam reads aloud from Walden:

  “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

  “That’s depressing,” Tina says.

  I turn to her like she’s crazy. That’s fascinating, I think. I wonder if Sam still wishes he could go off and search his soul, alone. I think of Mariel’s mother going off in search of her dream. I think how Mariel would love this class. I look at Tina. She’s looking at Ruby. They roll their eyes.

  “Don’t these writers make you want to start your summer reading today?” Sam says.

  There are a few snickers throughout the room. Yes, I think. Yes.

  “In just a few weeks,” Sam says, “you lucky people will have a whole long, glorious summer to lounge on the grass, soaking in books.”

  “I’ll be soaking in the sun,” Ruby says, and people laugh.

  “That’s right,” Sam says, “nothing better than reading on the beach.”

  The bell rings, and we gather up to go.

  “Don’t forget. Our final text. To Kill a Mockingbird. Next week.”

  It’s late when I get home from practice. I love being the Stage Manager. Mrs. Saperstone was right. It’s the best character. I’ve got some of the greatest lines: “Yes, it’s clearing up. There are the stars—doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky.”

  There’s that journey theme again. What did Whitman say? “The journey-work of the stars.” Then Wilder’s “crisscross journeys in the sky.” I love those lines. Poetry.

  I remember the summer we first moved here to Bramble and I spotted that man next door putting poetry on the little billboard on his front lawn. I called him the Poet before I learned his real name.

  His name was Sam—Sam Gracemore.

  Soon his name will be “Dad.”

  I can’t find Sam in the inn. “I think he’s outside,” Mom says.

  The herb garden smells spicy. Dill, rosemary, thyme. The vegetable garden is thriving too. Sam is proud of his three types of lettuce, four kinds of peppers, this year.

  It’s dark back here, but the moon is bright. Sam is sitting on the stone bench in the center of the labyrinth. His eyes are closed. He looks peaceful.

  Sam walks the labyrinth only early in the morning or late when the guests have retired for the night. He designed and planted this amazing maze himself. It’s a circle within a circle within a circle. The narrow pathway is bordered on both sides by perennial flowers and shrubs. You enter and follow the outer rim, then curve inward, then outward, then inward again, weaving in closer, than farther away, then toward the center, then out to the border, as you make your way to the resting bench in the middle. The bench is the bull’s-eye. I think of it as God’s eye. Sam’s sacred place.

  I stand here staring at this good, good man who is now my father.

  My birth father, William Frederick Havisham, was a man of big, brash, wild ideas. His crazy scheme to whisk my mother off on their honey-moon in a hot-air balloon ended in a tragedy. It took my mother more than a decade to overcome the shock and pain of his death. She was frozen like a statue with grief, too afraid or angry to love again.

  Sam is a different sort of man. This labyrinth is his Walden Pond, his wild hot-air balloon. Sam’s dream is rooted strong in the earth. He won’t float away from us.

  I think about running through the labyrinth right now and giving Sam his Father’s Day present early: “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.”

  I have practiced that moment over and over in my mind.

  But no, I’ll wait. I won’t spoil the surprise.

  Tina calls to talk about Suzanna Jubilee’s wedding again.

  The Blazers will descend on Bramble next Friday for the rehearsal dinner, sixteen bridesmaids and ushers in tow. Tina and Ruby are planning on sneaking in.

  “Willa, think about it,” Tina says. “If those sixteen bridesmaids are beauty pageant winners, those ushers will be cheesecakes.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘beefcakes’?” I say.

  “Cheesecakes, beefcakes, wedding cakes. Who the cake cares, Willa? You worry about the words, all I want to do is feast my eyes on sixteen gorgeous, hunky guys.”

  “But what about Jessie?” I ask. “Aren’t you still going out?”

  “What about him?” Tina says. “You know he’s my love muffin. But a girl can still check out the bakery, right? Nothing wrong with looking at the cheesecakes.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Twelve Secret Ingredients

  Most everybody’s asleep in Grover’s Corners. There are a few lights on: Shorty Hawkins, down at the depot, has just watched the Albany train go by.

  —Our Town

  It’s the night before Suzanna Jubilee’s wedding and everyone is asleep. I tiptoe down to the kitchen with a certain faded white satin satchel. I’m on a secret mission. It’s time to add twelve secret ingredients to the wedding cake. The delectably delicious, melt-in-your-mouth-like-taffy, decadently rich, and, as Tina would say, absolutely-to-die-for Bramblebriar signature wedding cake that Chef Rosie has so brilliantly concocted.

  Mom doesn’t know about the secret ingredients. Suzanna, either. Everyone will be surprised.

  Life can be boring without surprises, don’t you think?

  You may know that when Mom was a wedding planner, I used to add a secret ingredient to her perfect wedding plans. My intentions were good when I sewed a cherry pit into the hem of each Weddings by Havisham bridal gown on the night before a wedding. It was my way of planting a bit of love, a metaphorical seed of good luck for the happy marriage that would hopefully bloom the day after the fancy wedding. But alas, my little tradition caused a calamity of catastrophic proportions and ruined the most famous wedding my mother ever planned.

  I planted my last cherry pit when Mom and Sam got married and we moved here, into the Bramblebriar Inn. There’s a little cherry tree growing out front to remind me.

  I’m older and wiser now. Mom is too. I’m happy she’s getting back into the wedding-planning business. And now that she’s letting me be her partner, I am not going to do anything to screw this up.

  But I do want to add something new, something good.

  In the kitchen I turn on the lights, open the pastry refrigerator, and carefully lift out Rosie’s masterpiece.

  Following my instructions, Rosie left a hollow space—“a wishing well,” as I called it—on the top tier of the cake so that I could “add the magic,” as Rosie called it.

  I open the satchel and shake the twelve silver charms onto the counter. Each charm is wrapped in plastic, with long satin ribbons of different colors attached.

  I line the charms up in order.

  A bo
ok for B.

  A rose for R.

  An angel for A.

  A mirror for M.

  A beach dune for B.

  A labyrinth for L.

  An envelope for E.

  A butterfly for B.

  A ring for R.

  An inkwell for I.

  An anchor for A.

  A rainbow for R.

  “Bramblebriar.”

  I actually have Tina to thank for the idea. When she told me to go online and research currently popular wedding trends so I wouldn’t plan anything embarrassingly old-fashioned, I came across a new-old wedding custom so charming and romantic I knew immediately that it was perfect for us.

  It was easy to find most of the charms. The labyrinth took a bit more time. So appropriate, don’t you think? Labyrinths do take time. Mr. Wickstrom at the jewelry store came through for me. He’s such a nice man. I’m thinking of playing cupid for him and Mrs. Saperstone. I think they’d make a good couple.

  I lift the crystal bride-and-groom centerpiece from the top of the cake and set it on the counter. I carefully place each of the charms into the wishing well, one at a time, smiling as I think about what each one means to me, then I gently drape the shiny ribbons down over the tiers of the cake like a rainbow waterfall and put the bride and groom back on top.

  Tomorrow at the reception I will instruct the wedding guests to look under their dinner plates. Twelve pennies will be randomly placed at tables throughout the room. Those who find a penny will get to pull a ribbon from the wishing well before Suzy and Simon cut the cake.

  There are many versions of this tradition, and the charms usually come with a meaning attached. A clover for luck. A ring says you’ll marry soon. But I decided to let each person assign his or her own meaning to the charm. Everyone has different hopes and dreams. I think the charms will have more power, more magic, if people decide what the charms mean to them.

  I stand back and smile at the cake.

  I hope Suzanna will be pleased

  I hope my mother will be proud.

  Hurrying back upstairs in the dark, I nearly collide with Papa B Blazer.

  “Willa!” he shouts, all flustered and disheveled. “You scared me!”

  “I’m sorry, Papa B. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes, fine as fudge. It’s just that I forgot to hang the beads.”

  “The what?”

  “The rosary beads. Mama B. says if you hang rosaries on the line the night before an important occasion, then God will sure as shootin’ send you sunny weather.”

  “That’s nice, Papa B. Good luck.”

  I’ll have to remember to put rosaries out for Mum and Riley, too.

  Just before I fall asleep, I remember something. I head back downstairs, grab a flashlight, and go out to change the Bramble Board.

  SUZANNA AND SIMON:

  ON THIS, YOUR WEDDING DAY,

  EVERY BIRD SINGS ITS SWEETEST ONG FOR YOU,

  EVERY STAR SHINES ITS BRIGHTEST LIGHT.

  WE WISH YOU ALL THE HAPPINESS TWO HEARTS CAN HOLD.

  YOUR FRIENDS FOREVER AT THE BRAMBLEBRIAR INN

  As I walk back inside, I see the rosary beads hanging from my little cherry tree.

  Life’s awful funny, don’t you think?

  CHAPTER 23

  Suzanna Jubilee’s Wedding

  Perfectly lovely wedding! Loveliest wedding I ever saw.

  Oh, I do love a good wedding, don’t you?

  —Our Town

  When I look out my window in the morning, the sky is so blue it doesn’t seem real. It’s that crayon color I picked at five to paint a perfect picture. No clouds, not even the wispy ones. The sun is casting diamonds across the pond, and a sweet breeze, like music, is rustling through the trees and over the leaves of grass.

  It’s the sort of wedding day every bride dreams of and every bride deserves.

  My mother comes to help me get ready. “The maid of honor deserves special pampering,” she says. Our hairdresser, Jo, suggested I curl both sides of my hair today. “Be curly all over for a change.” Mom gently lifts a lock of my hair and fastens it with a tiny butterfly-shaped clip. She hooks the back of my gown, a silky chiffon, the color of lemon sherbet, with a poofy skirt that will swirl when I dance.

  “Yellow brings out the summer highlights in your hair,” Mom says, “so pretty.” She checks my face, adds a bit more eyeliner and mascara, brushes my cheeks with a bronze powder, and touches up my lipstick. “There,” she says. “Beautiful.”

  She looks into my eyes and smiles, a sweet-sad expression on her face.

  “You have your father’s eyes. Sparkling like the sea on a sunny summer day”

  My birth father, William Frederick Havisham. I remember she described his eyes that way in a poem I found long ago in a heart-shaped box in her closet.

  “Sam has blue eyes too,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Mom says, her face brightening. She looks at the clock. “Oh, I need to get dressed myself. It’s nearly showtime!”

  ***

  The sixteen bridesmaids are gathered downstairs in the living room. Sam is out by the pond overseeing the ushers with the seating of guests. The bride and groom are safely sequestered out in their matching “ganolas” on either side of the pond, shaded from view until the wedding begins.

  The beauty queens are buzzing about in a flurry, checking one another’s hair and makeup, adjusting their sashes in the mirror. Suzanna generously said they could all wear their favorite pageant gowns, and so no two bridesmaids are dressed alike.

  “Suzanna Jubilee is a sugarplum, a sugarcoated sugarplum,” Miss Georgia-Grown 2008 gushes, adjusting the tiara nestled in a towering bouffant of tomato red hair. “Imagine, lettin’ us pick our favorite pageant gowns instead of matching us up together like a string of paper dolls.”

  “Suzy-Jube isn’t threatened by other people’s beauty,” Miss Whappinger Falls 2007 says, dabbing some perfume down the valley on her chest. Mom had to kick Sam under the table at the rehearsal dinner to stop him from staring at Miss Whappinger.

  The grandfather clock chimes 3:00 p.m., and Sam pops his head into the room, so handsome in his tuxedo. “The guests have all been seated.”

  “What a stud,” Miss Southern Tier Dairy Queen whispers to Miss Mint Julep. “Wouldn’t toss him off the porch for eating potato chips.”

  “Shhh,” Miss Julep says, giggling, nodding toward me. “That’s Willa’s father.”

  We process in to a song by Kenny Rogers. Simon’s “hero,” Suzanna explained. Poor Tina and Ruby were so disappointed when they crashed the rehearsal dinner last night. The ushers were not the hunks they had imagined. Simon may be gorgeous, but his friends, most of them roadies for the band, look like they could use (a) a wardrobe makeover, (b) an exercise gym, (c) a haircut, and (d) a shower, not necessarily in that order. But when Tina and Ruby caught sight of Simon’s little brother, Jace, “rhymes with ‘face,’” standing there in his faded jeans, T-shirt, and cowboy hat, they started drooling like toddlers in front of the Swedish fish bin at Nana’s candy store.

  “He’s the best man?” Tina said. “Oh, my God, Willa, that means he’s yours.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re the maid of honor, silly. He’s the best man. That makes him yours!”

  When they took Jace’s picture for the fourth time, I had to boot Tina and Ruby out the door.

  Jace sat with me at the rehearsal dinner. He talked about football and rodeos, neither of which I know the slightest thing about, but I would have been speechless anyway. Jace is eighteen, going to college in the fall. “We’ve got an easy job tomorrow,” he said. “Sixteen couples to follow walking in. How can we screw that up, right? I hand Simon the rings. You take Suzy’s bouquet. ‘I do,’ ‘I do,’ we’re done, let’s party.”

  The sixteen bridesmaids process forward, and now it’s our turn. Jace, “rhymes with ‘face,’”—handsome, rugged cowboy face—holds out his arm to me and smiles in a way that give
s me goose bumps even though it must be eighty degrees. “Ready?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  I smell his cologne, feel the strong muscles of his arm as he draws me close beside him and leads us forward. I look up at him and he winks, and I think about the slow dance we will do at the reception.

  When the sixteen bridesmaids and sixteen ushers, the maid of honor and hunky best man, are assembled at the edge of the pond, the two “ganolas” set forth. They move toward the floating dock and the white boat waiting in the center. When they arrive at the dock, the bride and groom disembark and join hands.

  Simon helps Suzanna into the white boat, and together they row toward us.

  It is a beautiful, simple gesture, the two of them rowing together. Not what you might have expected from a beauty queen. But then, Suzanna is so much more than that.

  “Two people in a marriage have to row together,” Suzanna explained to me. “That’s what my mama taught me. That’s what my mama’s mama taught her. You come from different shores. You meet in the center. And then you row together.”

  After the ceremony the photographer takes countless pictures. The bridal party has a private champagne toast, and then, when the guests are all seated at the tables under the lemon yellow tents, the bandleader begins announcing the bridesmaids and ushers.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, a special round of applause for the maid of honor, the bride’s good friend, Miss Willa Havisham, escorted by the best man, brother of the groom, Mr. Jacey Finch.”

  Jace takes my arm, and we stroll in to the sound of clapping and whooping calls, and then the bride and groom dance their first dance, Elvis Presley’s “Unchained Melody,” and then the bridal party joins them.

  Jace smiles at me and winks. He has the longest eyelashes I have ever seen. He wraps me like a hug in his arms. My cheek rests on the slope of his chest. My heart is drumming. I am slow-dancing with a beautiful cowboy He is a great dancer. We move in perfect rhythm, no awkwardness at all. The sweet smell of his boutonniere mingles with the wilder scent of his cologne, and I feel like I am floating. The bandleader invites the rest of the guests to join in the dance. Good, keep the music going. My head is spinning. Jace leans his face down, rests his cheek in my hair. “Nice,” he says. I close my eyes.