Home Another Way (20 page)

“Shoot,” I said as I caught my pantyhose on the bottom corner of Jack’s dresser. A run snaked up my leg, from ankle to the ultra-tight control top. I hadn’t lost as much weight as I’d wanted. “I didn’t bring another pair.”

“I did,” Beth said. “I’m always running hose. Check my bag.”

I rummaged around her pretty pink suitcase, destroying her perfectly stacked piles. I grabbed the hose—not control top, and really, why would Beth need them with her boyish hips and flat tummy?—and went into the bathroom. Jack kept nail scissors in his vanity drawer, with his comb and razor. I pulled off my ruined hose and cut the legs off, just beneath the support panty. Slowly, I slipped on the new pair, and then tugged the panty from my old pair over them. Instant liposuction. I looked five pounds thinner.

I’d overslept that morning. Beth had come into my room at eight-thirty, and when I didn’t respond to her gentle shaking, she pinched me. “But I set the alarm for seven,” I told her.

She checked. “For seven
p.m.
Come on, we’re going to the hall now. Just throw on your shoes and grab what you need.”

So I stuffed my feet, sockless, into my boots and tripped down the last three stairs while trying to zip my parka. Maggie crammed me into her Jeep, two hot trays of lasagna on my lap, burning my thighs through a bath towel and my thin flannel pajama pants. Beth had followed in her own car; she had the dresses. Beth’s beautician friend would meet us at the Grange to fix our hair and makeup.

All I’d needed to remember was my violin.

“My violin,” I yelled, bursting out of the bathrooms and jamming my legs back into my pants. “I left it at the inn. Beth, give me your keys.”

“You can’t go,” the beautician, Dianne, said. “I need to do your hair now.”

“Forget my hair,” I snapped.

“Sarah, relax,” Beth said. “I’m done. I’ll find someone to run back to the inn. Where did you leave it?”

“In my room. I’m such an idiot.”

“It’s okay. Really. There are at least thirty women in the kitchen. I’m sure one of them isn’t busy.”

I sank into the chair as Beth left, and Dianne stuck a brush in my hair. She gave a tug. “Your hair is like a rat’s nest,” she said.

“Give me that,” I said. I hated having my hair brushed by others. Some women found it relaxing; I found it annoying.

And painful. Knots hurt more when someone else tried to comb them out; I’d rather torture myself.

With my hair finally smooth, Dianne used huge plastic clips to clamp my hair into sections. “Beth wants me to curl your hair, and pull it up.”

She twisted handfuls around hot rollers and then doused me with hair spray, the cheap kind that smelled like perfume-laced vodka and turned hair into a bulletproof helmet. She removed the rollers, sticking dozens of bobby pins into my scalp before holding a hand mirror in front of me and declaring, “Done.” Then she grimaced. “You were supposed to wear a button-down shirt.”

I plucked at the neck of my thermal top. “It will stretch.”

“It won’t. You’ll mess your hair. We’ll cut it off.”

“No way.”

“Fine. I’ll help you, then.” She grabbed the back of my collar and pulled, choking me.

“Stop it,” I coughed.

“You need to pull the front.”

We maneuvered the shirt over my head, and Dianne fussed with each ringlet, fluffing and spraying again. She wanted to do my makeup, too, but I said I’d take care of it. So she left, and I stood in my hose and push-up bra in Jack’s dimly lit bathroom—one yellow 60-watt bulb hung, coverless, in the middle of the ceiling—squinting, face pressed to the mirrored medicine cabinet, wiping clumps of mascara off my lashes. Beth poked her head in. “Mission accomplished. Your violin will be here any minute.”

I blotted my lips on some toilet paper. “Thanks.”

“Can you help me into my dress? Mom ironed the ribbons, so you shouldn’t have a problem.”

She unzipped the plastic cover off the gown, eased it off the hanger, and untied her robe. I held the dress open for her to step into, and she did so, with pointed toe, like someone stepping into the bathtub, checking the temperature of the water. I shimmied the dress up and worked the laces of the corset, pulling, tightening, unfurling—my sweaty fingers laboring to make it perfect. “How’s that? Too tight? Too loose?”

“No, it’s good. How do I look?”

The dress fit perfectly now, and the soil at the hem had been scrubbed out. Beth wore her pearls, of course. “Something new,” she said. “Well, new enough.” Dianne had curled just the top layer of Beth’s hair into corkscrewed tendrils, and kept the left side down, covering her mangled ear. The right side was pinned away from her face with a fresh lily. Beth never wore makeup and had been concerned that wearing it today, on one side of her face, would look clownish. But now a little blush colored her cheek, and a touch of ivory shadowed her left eye.

“Beautiful. Are you nervous?”

She smoothed her hands over the front of her dress. “It’s funny. You always read in those romance novels about brides being all fidgety and fluttery before their weddings. Or in those cheesy made-for-TV movies. But I don’t feel any of that. It just feels . . . natural, I guess. Like it’s supposed to be.”

I put on my dress and shoes. “Where’s my slip?” I said, pawing through my knapsack. I shook everything out onto the floor.

“I think it looks okay without it,” Beth said. “Put that lamp on the floor and stand in front of it.” I did, and she nodded. “You’re fine.”

Maggie came in then, carrying Beth’s flowers, three lilies with balsam boughs, stems tied in white silk ribbon. “Oh, baby, you look so beautiful,” she said, nose turning red.

“Mom, stop. You promised.”

“I know. I just can’t help it.” Maggie dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “This is one of the happiest days of my life. Right up there with my own wedding, the day the twins were born, and you, too. You were such a feisty little thing. Cried for three days straight.”

“Who’s crying?” Jack asked, coming out of the kitchen holding my violin case. “Not my dear, sweet mother, who swore to her only daughter she wouldn’t, at least not before the ceremony.”

“Hush, both of you,” Maggie said. “When your babies get married, you’ll understand.”

“This, I believe, is yours,” Jack said, giving me the instrument. “You look lovely.”

“Thanks,” I said, popping the latches.

“And you,” Jack said to Beth, “look like an angel. I’d hug you, but I don’t want to wrinkle you.”

“You’d better hug me,” Beth said, and Jack folded his arms around her, pressing his mouth to her ear and whispering. She nodded, blinked, tears catching in her eyelashes on one side, tumbling over her scars on the other.

“Not you, too,” Jack said softly. He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and caught the tears on her jawbone. Then he looked at his watch. “We’d better head back there.”

Beth put on her snow boots—she had to walk around the outside of the building to get to the vestibule unseen. Jack took her white silk heels. Maggie draped her coat over her shoulders, gathered up the back of her gown. “Ready?” she asked.

“More than ready,” Beth said.

The three of them left me there, alone, holding my violin. They were family, and I watched them like a child at Christmastime, staring through the front window at the toy store, watching the trains puff around the track, looking at the dolls and balls and video games, and knowing I’d be getting only one gift under the tree—a sweater or an atlas, or some other dull, practical item.

I went out into the hall. Patty sat at the piano, and she looked at me, all smug and cheerful. “Like Reverend Watson has nothing better to do than clean up your messes.”

“Shut up,” I said, pushing in front of her to pick out an A, her nose in my armpit.

She grunted, scooted to the other side of the bench. I tuned my violin, and she banged out a few noisy chords. The guests scrambled to their seats. There were more people than chairs; some shared, some stood behind the last row. A woman wearing faded plaid stirrup pants, slouch socks, and high-top sneakers sat next to another dressed in her best Sunday blouse, rayon with a wild ivy print, who sat next to another in a skirt stitched together from hand-me-downs. There were men with cruddy dungarees next to men with ironed chinos, next to men in jogging suits. Greasy baseball caps and polyester ties and polished shoes. They were all here. All together.

Patty and I started to play, and the mothers were escorted in. Mrs. Draven, a doughy, potato-faced woman, waddled to the front, then Maggie, wearing a navy brocade suit she’d ordered from the Macy’s catalog. As soon as she was seated, Patty transitioned to the “Wedding March,” and Beth, her arm hooked though Jack’s, stepped from the vestibule. Right foot. Left foot. She walked toward Dominic, who stood at the altar, his gray suit too short in the sleeves, hairy wrists sticking out beneath the cuffs of his white shirt. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Jack gave Beth a kiss on the forehead. He took her hand and Dominic’s hand, and joined them together, holding his hands around theirs for several moments. He spoke to Dominic, who nodded vigorously. Jack slapped him on the back and stepped behind them, facing the crowd. I left my violin on top of the piano and stood near Beth, taking her bouquet from her.

“Friends,” Jack said, “we are all here today to celebrate with Dominic and Beth as their hearts and lives are united in love. The essence of any marriage relationship is love, both the couple’s love for Christ, and their love for each other. But much of what we call love—the warm, fuzzy glow, the excitement and romance—will never be an adequate foundation for marriage. Love, by its very nature, is active and giving, not self-centered and self-serving.

“Jesus Christ is our example of true love, and He has commanded us to love one another as He loves us. And how does He love us? First, He gives all for our sake, without hesitation or concern for himself. He laid down His life for us.

“Next, from Christ’s example, we see that love shares all. There are no secret compartments, no hidden rooms, no locked closets in a successful love relationship. There is only openness and, as a result, trust when a husband and wife truly love each other.

“Finally, the Lord Jesus teaches us that love provides all. It provides security, it seeks to develop ability, and it shares the common purpose of obtaining what is best for the one loved. Such love is not merely impossible—it is supernatural. Only Jesus Christ can love this way, and our love for one another can resemble this only if we submit to Him and depend on His Spirit to love through us.”

Memory hoisted herself from her seat in the first row. She plucked the rubber bands off her Bible. One of them caught her finger, stretched, and shot into the crowd. “Guess I should have gone done that ’fore getting up here,” she said, flipping through the pages, pulling out a sheet of lined paper. “This here’s what Paul says ’bout love, and he’s bunches smarter than any of us, so we better listen up.

“Love is patient. Love is kind. It don’t want anything that belongs to other folk. It don’t brag. It ain’t proud. It ain’t rude. It don’t look out for its own concerns. It don’t get angry too easy. It don’t keep track of other folk’s mistakes. Love ain’t happy with evil. But it’s all joyful when the truth is spoke. It keeps on protecting. It keeps on trusting. It keeps on hoping. It ain’t never giving up. . . .”

I could add a few more to the list. Love doesn’t hurl full mugs of steaming coffee at someone’s head. It doesn’t purposely leave the gas tank on empty, or party all night, without a phone call, and come home at breakfast reeking of other men.

My marriage to David had no chance of taking—two years drinking together, two months sleeping together, and two hours of meaningful conversation the entire time we’d known each other. He’d tended bar at a club I frequented. I told him about the pregnancy in the club’s bathroom, stale urine in the bowl, splashed on the cracked tile floor.

“I have three more of these at home, if you want to see them,” I said, waving the stick with the boastful pink line in the window.

“You getting rid of it?”

“I guess. I hadn’t really gotten that far yet.”

“Marry me,” David said, and he held the pregnancy test so gently between his thumb and forefinger, as if at any moment it would sprout legs and arms, and start crying “Dada.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’ve always wanted kids.”

I’d thought of my grandmother then, how devastated she’d be to learn I’d gotten knocked up out of wedlock. She had no illusions of my purity, but the flashing neon sign of a pregnant belly couldn’t be hidden as easily as the half-empty pack of birth control pills she found tucked between my mattresses when I was fifteen. I had despised the tiny part of me that still believed I could, somehow, earn her love. I’d show her, I thought. Let all her pious cronies know that she had a whore for a daughter
and
a granddaughter.

“Let’s do it,” I’d told David.

After Beth and Dominic exchanged vows, the best man—I didn’t know him—took the rings from his pocket. Dominic’s hands shook, unable to get Beth’s plain gold band over her knuckle. She pushed it on the rest of the way and then gracefully slipped Dominic’s ring onto his finger.

“Dominic and Beth, I now pronounce you husband and wife. May God give you enough tears to keep you tender, enough hurts to keep you compassionate, enough of failure to keep your hands clenched tightly in His, and enough blessings to make certain you walk with Him. May you never take each other’s love for granted, but always experience that wonder that exclaims, ‘Out of all this world you have chosen me.’ When life is done, may you be found then as now, hand in hand, still thanking God for each other. May you ever serve Him happily, faithfully, together until you return to glory or until at last one shall lay the other into His arms. And we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“I now introduce to you Mr. and Mrs. Dominic Draven. What God has joined, let no man put asunder.”

Everyone stood and applauded, and Beth said to Jack, “Can we kiss now?”

Jack grinned, reddening slightly. “I forgot that part. Of course you can kiss. You’re married.”