Home Another Way (17 page)

“The chair covers are already sewn, with nearly three weeks to spare,” Maggie said at one of her twice-weekly organizational meetings. Usually she, Beth, and I met for dinner at the inn, but today she’d asked us to come in the morning. Nine in the morning, to be more exact. My eyelids kept falling closed, despite my three cups of coffee, and I refused to empty my bladder, the itchy pressure forcing me to stay awake.

Beth and Dominic would move into the inn after they were married, and Maggie wanted to prepare their new bedroom—Jack’s old room, and the room she used now for her sewing and storage. Boxes needed to be moved and walls needed to be painted, and a full-sized bed from one of the inn bedrooms had to be disassembled, dragged downstairs, and put back together for the newlyweds.

Crossing number 17 off her two-page list, Maggie said, “Now, music.”

“I didn’t ask her yet,” Beth said. They both looked me.

“No,” I said.

“Please, Sarah?” Beth asked. “I wasn’t going to say anything, and Patty was just going to play, but she was practicing after church and it just sounded so lonely. It would be so much better if you played along with her.”

“No,” I said again. “No.”

“For a wedding gift? Please?”

“Oh, come on. You can’t do that to me.”

“I’ll beg. I’ll do your laundry until you leave.”

I considered this. “And fold it?”

Beth nodded.

“And deliver it to me, and put it away?”

“If that means throwing it into the bottom of the closet like you do, I can manage that.”

“All right, I’ll play.”

“Wonderful,” Maggie said, scratching a line through number 23.

“I’ll talk to Patty,” Beth said, “and set up some time for you to practice together.”

Double wonderful.
“Anything else for me on that list that I don’t know about?” I grumbled.

“Not that I see,” Maggie said, laughing. “For now, at least.”

“How’s the food coming?” Beth asked.

The reception was being held at the Grange. After the ceremony, the folding tables would be set up, and guests would partake in a lasagna extravaganza, eating off disposable plates with plastic forks. Ten church ladies volunteered to each make four pans of pasta—cheap, easy to freeze, and conveniently transported when needed—while several others would be baking Italian bread, making tossed salads, and decorating wedding cupcakes. At least two hundred and fifty people were expected. Probably more.

When I’d asked Beth how many guests she planned for, she shrugged and said, “I’m not sending out invitations. Anyone who wants to come can come.”

“You’re going to have random crazies walking in off the street?”

“No one around here is random, Sarah.”

The wedding date, she said, had been announced during Sunday services. She’d been telling people who came to eat at the diner; Dominic did the same at the gas station. Word of mouth would spread the news into each corner and crevice of the mountain. Beth didn’t want to forget to invite anyone—there were so many people, she said, who’d prayed for her since before she was born, who wrote cards of encouragement after the fire, who wept with her mother. Those who sent a couple wrinkled dollars to help pay for her treatment, money they should have used to buy milk. Anyone who loved her, she said, was welcome.

And, with Beth, that was all who knew her.

Beth belonged to Jonah. Every person in the town had taken her for their own. I’d seen that the moment she declared her engagement—everyone from the lumberjacks to the nosy old women, to the children who offered to tie ribbons around the tulle baggies of Jordan almonds for wedding favors. Beth’s marriage, it seemed, ended the mourning shrouding the town since the fire. She no longer needed anyone hovering over her to protect her from the sun, or the stares. She was moving on, and the people of Jonah could share her joy, give her a set of steak knives, and move on with her.

“Oh, and flowers,” Maggie said. “Beth, you still need to figure your flower budget.”

“Yes, drill sergeant,” Beth said, saluting and giggling. “This is why I only gave you eight weeks. If you had eight months, the entire Grange would have been renovated, and you’d be serving a twelve-course meal at the reception.”

“Oh, hush,” Maggie said. “Are we going to paint now?”

“Yes,” I said. “But after I use the bathroom.”

“Wait,” Beth said. “Your dress came yesterday. You have to try it on first.”

She took the dress from the closet and gave it to me, the thin plastic that covered it clinging to my leg. I carried it to the bathroom and changed into it after using the toilet.

A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door. I spun, and could see the outline of my panties bulging through the fabric. So I slipped them off, turned again, and made a mental note to get a slip before the wedding. The dress pulled a little across the hips; I’d been too stubborn to order the next size. I sucked in my stomach. No potatoes or bread for the next three weeks.

“I love it,” Beth said when I returned to the kitchen. She’d given me a mail-order catalog and dog-eared four different styles. I chose this, a spaghetti-strapped, basil-colored chiffon with three sheer layers of skirting. Hundreds of tiny beads embellished the top, sparkling like the dancing snow on New Year’s Eve.

Maggie knelt, tugged at the hem. “Do you have her shoes, Beth?”

I stepped into the silver heels, feet sticking to them because I had no hose on. Maggie gave the hem another look. “I don’t think it needs to be taken up. Do you? Walk a bit.”

I paced around the room, fabric cool and flowing over my legs, swishing, tickling my ankles. Maggie pinched the seams at my hips. “I can let this out a little,” she said.

“It looks fine, Mom. Stop fussing,” Beth said, and then turned to me, hiding her mouth behind her hand, as if she had a secret to tell in my ear, but instead spoke in a mock whisper. “She’s always like that, Sarah. Ignore her. I do.”

“Forgive me if I want everything perfect for your big day,” Maggie said.

“I’m bloated,” I lied. “You know.”

The women nodded, like women do, conspirators in the monthly drudgery, and Beth wanted to know if I needed Motrin. I shook my head, and asked, “Where’s your dress?”

“Oh, that,” Beth said, rolling her eyes. “Another saga.”

“Go get them,” Maggie said. “We need Sarah’s opinion.”

I changed back into my jeans and sweater while Beth fetched the gowns from her room. She hung each one in front of her, bending the wire hanger so it fit over her head.

There were three dresses. One was plain and white, a simple A-line with a corseted bodice and thick, gathered straps. The second, an ivory silk with three-quarter sleeves and high neck, had a two-tone beige pattern on the skirt. The final dress glittered with pounds of rhinestones and sequins, tag hanging from the zipper, red clearance sticker announcing
Final Sale.
The other two dresses were dirty at the bottom, seemingly from dragging across the floor.

“Not the last one,” I said. “That’s awful.”

“That’s Patty Saltzman’s dress,” Beth said. “She told me I could borrow it, if I wanted. She bought it a few years ago and has been saving it—”

“For Jack?”

“I think she’s given up on him, since she said she planned on dying an old maid. The other two I bought through an online auction. Only used once,” she said with a chuckle.

“I like the first one,” I said.

“See?” Beth said to Maggie.

“I still think the ivory is more appropriate,” Maggie said.

“My mother doesn’t believe a bride should show that much skin in church.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

The older woman hesitated. “Nothing.”

Beth went to her. “Mom, I don’t care if my scars show. The only person I’m worried about impressing is Dom, and he’s going to see a lot more than my arm and shoulders that night.”

“Elizabeth Grace Watson,” Maggie said, choking out a laugh.

“Well, it’s true,” Beth said, grinning. “I’m going to take Sarah down to my room and show her how this dress looks on. We’ll meet you for painting in a few minutes.”

I sat on the canopied bed as Beth undressed behind the open closet door, tossing her jeans and sweatshirt onto the wing chair in the corner. Then her socks, her undershirt—the tank kind little girls wear. She came into the center of the room, holding the top of the dress. “Zip me, please?”

I did, and latched the hook-and-eye between her shoulder blades. Then I tightened the corset, the satin ribbons woefully uneven and droopy. “I hope my maid of honor duties don’t include tying you into this.”

“Duly noted,” she said, spinning to face me. “Okay, what do you think? I know you’ll be brutally honest. I . . . I need you to be.”

Her left shoulder and arm looked smooth and white-chocolaty against the dress, fine, golden-brown hairs stiff with cold. On her neck and chest, Beth had several small patches of iridescent skin, and thick nodules of tissue stuck in her left elbow, her armpit, like wads of wet, chewed bubble gum. But most of the scars were waxy, snug, as if someone had melted every pink Crayola shade—salmon and carnation, razzmatazz and wild watermelon—swirling them together with a wooden spoon until creamy, then poured the molten liquid over her body, where it cooled and hardened. The Braille of agony, of healing, to be read on her wedding night by Dominic’s fingers.

“I think you look beautiful,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“No one has ever seen this much of me. I never wear less than a T-shirt and shorts. Long shorts. Even swimming.”

“You just told Maggie you weren’t worried about it.”

“She’s my mother, Sarah,” Beth said, as if I understood how mothers and daughters interacted, what secrets were kept, what was shared. “I was thinking about showing Dom. This. I mean, I told him that what he sees on my neck and face is all over me. I told him I don’t have any—”

She wiped away a stray tear. “It seems so stupid to be crying about having no breasts when I’m alive, and there are people with so many worse things wrong with them. I just don’t want him to be disappointed.”

“He won’t be,” I said.

“I keep trying to tell myself that.”

“Has he ever been with . . . you know?”

Beth shook her head. “No. Neither of us.”

“Then trust me. He won’t be thinking about your boobs.

Or lack thereof.”

She smiled a little. “Thanks.”

Beth changed, hanging her dress on her closet door, so she could see it each morning when she woke, she said. Then, in the spare room, we packed up skeins of yarn, fat quarters, and Christmas decorations that hadn’t made it down to the basement yet. Maggie labeled each box, and we carried them into her bedroom. After the wedding, she’d find a place for them.

We covered the wood floor with several paint-spattered canvas drop cloths. Then we taped around the moldings and ceiling; none of us wanted to cut in freehand. I pulled on a pair of white painter’s overalls, and asked, “So, what color did you choose?”

“That’s a good question,” Beth said. She pointed to the closet, where I found fourteen cans of paint. “We couldn’t get down the mountain to the hardware store, so that’s what we have. Leftovers from whoever I could find to give them to me.”

Six of the cans were white. There were also two shades of green, three yellows, a blue, a gray, and a full can of magenta. I pried off the lids. “What if we mix this green with some yellow and gray? I bet we’d end up with a nice mossy color.”

“Sounds good,” Beth said, and found a bucket for mixing.

The walls needed only one coat, so we were able to paint the walls and trim by midafternoon. I dropped my brush into the paint tray and sighed, twisting to crack my spine. “What’s next?”

“I’m working dinner, so I have to clean up and go,” Beth said. “Sarah, thanks for all your help. I’ll let you know about practice with Patty.”

“Great,” I said, and she flitted off.

Maggie closed the paint cans. “I’m beat. We’ll do the bed another time. Or I’ll have Jack get some men to do it.”

“Let me help you wash those.” I gathered the paintbrushes and trays, and followed Maggie to the basement—a cellar, actually, with damp stone walls and cobwebbed beams that brushed the top of my head. Only cold water flowed from the utility sink, and I rinsed the brushes until the water ran clear through the bristles, and then went back upstairs, filled the bathroom sink with bubbles and hot water, and soaked my hands for several long minutes.

“Maggie, I’m going,” I said, poking my head into her bedroom.

“Wait. I want to show you something.”

She propped open her hope chest and removed a quilt, all vibrant yellow, ivory, pink, and brown. “It’s a tradition in my family. Mothers make a quilt to give their daughters when they marry. I started this when Beth turned thirteen.” She ran her hand over it, hugged it. “After the fire, I buried it in the mothballs, unfinished. There didn’t seem any point in working on it. I wasn’t sure she was going to make it, and if she did . . .

“Well, that seems like such a silly way to think, now. Anyway, I finally picked it up again about a year ago, figuring I’d give it to her when she turned twenty-one. I’m glad I don’t have to wait that long.”

“The wedding will be perfect,” I said.

“I know. Even if everything turns out wrong, it will still be perfect, ’cause every mother wants to see her baby girl married and settled. And happy.”

“I don’t think they get happier than Beth,” I said.

“You don’t have to tell me that twice,” Maggie said.

No, I didn’t need to be told twice, either.

chapter TWENTY-NINE

I picked up the groceries Doc ordered each week for Ben and Rabbit, and drove to their shack. The trip took more than an hour now—each way—because of the weather. Municipal snowplows rarely found their way into Jonah until two or three days after a storm. The main streets were kept clear by the townsfolk who had their own plows attached to the front of their trucks and Jeeps. The less-traveled mountain roads were not as well maintained, and on several occasions I had to drive two or three miles in reverse because I’d hit a stretch of road blocked by snow, and there was no room to turn around. When this happened, Doc would call in a favor, and in a few days the route would be cleared so I could deliver the food. Remarkably, I had few problems driving on the small, dirt roads close to the Harrison home, as the thick pine canopy sheltered them from the elements.