Willa by Heart (6 page)

People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome.

—
Our Town

“Willa, come up here,” Mom shouts when I get home. She's in one of the small guest bedrooms. Maybe she's thinking about converting it into a nursery for the baby.

“Guess who's getting married,” she says, all excited.

“Who?”

“Guess. You'll never guess.”

“I don't know, Mom, who?” And then I picture Sulamina Mum. Riley and Mum. I'd be so happy for them, but what if they decide to move back home? …

“Give up?”

“Yes.”

“Suzanna Blazer! She just got engaged, and she wants to have the wedding here!”

I start to laugh. “That's wonderful!”

Suzanna Jubilee Blazer—we call her Suzy-Jube—is the gorgeous daughter of our best and nicest customers, Chickles and Bellford T. Blazer. A date with Suzy-Jube was the prize that lured all of the boys in Bramble to our Valentine's dance. Let's just say Suzy-Jube is a boy magnet. She has won a ton of beauty pageants. She was just crowned Miss American Role Model. “That's great, Mom. Who is she marrying?”

“His name is Simon Finch, and he's a drummer in a band—country music, I think—I forget the name. Suzy met him on her Miss Daisydew USA tour last year. Chickles says Simon ‘doesn't have two nickels to tape together for a dime,' which I guess means he's not rich, but the Blazers don't care. They're millionaires. All they care about is that Suzy is happy. Chickles said she's never seen two people so much in love. They are, I think she said, ‘ding-dong ding-a-ling happy,' and they want to tie the knot as soon as possible. They've booked
the entire inn for the second Saturday in June, the tenth. The rehearsal dinner will be the night before, of course. I'm going to have to rebook the reservations we already have for that weekend, but—”

“This June?
Two months from now? Why the hurry?”

“Simon's band is going on tour….”

“Well, good for them. I'm happy for them.”

“Me too,” Mom says. She walks over to the window and looks out. “I was actually thinking lately that it might be time to start hosting more weddings here at the Inn.” She turns and looks at me with an odd expression on her face and then turns back to the window. “The labyrinth and gardens are so beautiful, and now that the barn is all renovated, with the right lighting and flowers it would make a quaint chapel, and we could do something with fountains on the lake, white tents on the lawn for the reception. I know it's a lot to take on with a new baby on the way and …”

My heart beats harder. “Mom?”

She turns and smiles at me. She knows what I'm going to say.

“Can I please help you plan Suzanna's wedding?”

“Yes. I would love that, Willa.” She walks over and touches my arm. “I know we got off to a rough start the first time. But we're both older and wiser now and …”

“Partners?” I say.

“Partners,” she says.

I hug her tight and the tears come. Happy tears, both of us.

After dinner I finish my homework and call Tina.

“Wait until you hear this. We're back in the wedding-planning business. And this time Mom and I are going to be partners.”

“Whoopee!” Tina says. “That's great. Now, Willa …” Her voice gets more serious. “This is important, so listen. You better get online right now and start researching. Keeping track of what's in and out for weddings is like keeping track of shoe styles. If you miss a week, you're dead. The last thing you want to do is plan some old-fashioned …”

Tina dreams of the day she'll say “I do.” She already has an album filled with pictures of wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses, destination wedding packages …

“You'll need a signature cocktail, of course,” Tina says.

“A what?”

Tina sighs. “Oh, Willa, please, don't you read the celebrity magazines? Anybody who's anybody has a fancy drink, a signature cocktail, created especially for their wedding.”

“What about champagne—”

Tina sighs louder. “Willa, please, champagne is
soooo
last season.”

Later I open my journal and start to write. So many good things are happening at once. JFK …
Our Town
… a baby on the way … and now Suzanna's wedding!

I've been keeping a chronicle of my life since September of eighth grade, when I inadvertently caused my wedding-planner mother's most famous wedding, two stars from
Forever Young,
to end in a disaster. I was actually trying to do something good for the bride and groom, but my best intentions backfired into a colossal disaster that made headlines nationwide and resulted in Mom deciding to give up Weddings by Havisham and move us to Maine to live.

The day we left Bramble was the saddest day of my life, but my wonderful friend Mr. Tweed—this was before he married Nana and became Gramp Tweed—gave me a journal. It had a brown cover with a sunflower on the front. I poured out all of my anger and sadness into that blank book, and every time I wrote, I felt better.

When we moved back to Bramble, I bought myself a new journal, and then another and another. They are lined up in chronological order on the top shelf of my bookcase, right there with my Willa's Pix, my very favorite books in the world. I don't write every day, but I do try to catch the highlights. When I look back and read old entries it reminds me what was in my heart then, what I was worried about, or excited about, what I cared about, what I loved.

I can't believe we are getting back in to the wedding-planning business.
How fun.
All those years when my mother ran Weddings by Havisham, she pushed away every man who might want to marry her, and she locked me out of her wedding-planning world. I guess she worried that if I got too wrapped up in dreamy, fairy-tale wedding stuff that I would spend less time on school.
It has always been important to her that I get good grades and set my sights on college. I was actually forbidden from going into her studio, but I had a key and would sneak down at night to see the easels, which displayed the Twelve Perfect Ingredients of whatever masterpiece wedding she was working on at the time, quietly adding my own thirteenth secret ingredient….

Now Mom is happily married to Sam and they are going to have a baby and we live in a gorgeous inn and I have a wonderful father and one of my favorite people in the world is getting married and I am going to help plan her wedding!

I open
Our Town
and stand in front of the mirror. I stare at the girl looking back at me. Curly hair on one side, horse-tail straight on the other, blue eyes, my one and only really good feature. Skinny body, like a ten-year-old. I turn to act 1. Emily is talking to her mother.

EMILY:
Mama, will you answer me a question, serious?

MRS. WEBB:
Seriously, dear—not serious.

EMILY:
Seriously,—will you?

MRS. WEBB:
Of course, I will.

EMILY:
Mama, am I good looking?

MRS. WEBB:
Yes, of course you are. All my children have got good features; I'd be ashamed if they hadn't.

EMILY:
Oh, Mama, that's not what I mean. What I mean is: am I
pretty?

MRS. WEBB:
I've already told you, yes…. I never heard of such foolishness.

EMILY:
Oh, Mama, you never tell us the truth about anything.

I finish all the lines from act 1, then move on to act 2. Auditions are a week from Friday. I just have to get this part. I just have to be Emily.

I pull out the bag of taffy from my nightstand, open up a peppermint one, and pop it in. Mmmm, good. Which book tonight?
Wuthering Heights or Wizard of Oz?

I pick the yellow brick road.

I'm going to make speeches all my life.

—Emily,
Our Town

By Thursday afternoon I still haven't come up with a good idea for our next Community Service project, and Freshman Class Meeting is tomorrow.

“How about a race for the heart association?” Mom suggests. “Maybe in Gramp's memory.” My mother runs 5K and 10K road races to raise money for various charities.

Mrs. Saperstone has another thought. “Maybe your class could become literacy volunteers,” she says. “It only takes a few weeks to learn how to teach someone to read. It would be a perfect follow-up to your campaign to save the library. We do the training right here, and a new session is starting soon.”

“How about a book drive?” Sam suggests. “A lot of schools lost everything in that hurricane down South last month,” Sam says. “Maybe you could collect books to restock a school library. That would be a fine contribution.”

On Friday morning I'm in the kitchen making tea when I see Rosie's paycheck on the counter next to her purse. I shouldn't look. It's none of my business, but I do.

What? That's all Rosie makes for a whole week working here? That's less than Tina spends on clothes in a week.

I go and find my mother. “Why don't we pay Rosie more?”

Mom raises her eyebrows. “How do you know what we pay Rosie?”

I tell her how I snooped, but that isn't the point.

“It's none of your business, Willa,” Mom says, “but that's actually several dollars above minimum wage. Rosie doesn't have a college degree and—”

“Why does that matter? She's an awesome cook, especially desserts. She should have her own bakery or something. So what if she doesn't have a degree? How is she supposed to take care
of Liliana and buy a house for them and put her through college someday—”

“Whoa, Willa. A house?” My mother lowers her voice, looks around to make sure no guests are nearby. “Rosie's lucky she can afford an apartment. She's lucky she has this job.”

“You mean Liliana is never going to have her own house? A yard with a swing set and a sliding—”

“Willa.” Mom smiles. “You have such a good heart. It's wonderful you care so much, but … hmmm, wait, you made me think of something. I was just reading in the paper about a new organization called Come Home Cape Cod. Yesterday's paper, I think. They are raising money to build houses for low-income Cape Cod families.”

That's it.
“That's great, Mom, thanks!”

I go up to my room to do some research. I find the article about Come Home Cape Cod in the
Cape Cod Times.
JFK's father is the publisher. Maybe he knows more about it. The story talks about how finding affordable housing has become a serious problem on Cape Cod. Developers are swallowing up land and building expensive vacation homes, while many people who grew up here
are being forced to move off Cape because they can't afford to live here anymore.

Come Home Cape Cod hopes to build ten homes a year. It says it costs about $50,000 to build one of these houses, but if they can get land donated and contributions of materials from building companies and free labor from roofers and electricians and other services, it can cost less.

I find information on the numbers of Cape Codders who are living in poverty and about what the average Cape Cod worker makes and how many people are living in temporary shelters, places like the crummy Oceanview Inn….

This is going to be great.

When I share my idea at Freshman Class Meeting, though, let's just say I don't get a standing ovation.

“Oh, Willa,” Ruby Sivler says, “give it a rest, will you? We did the library. Isn't that enough? It's almost summer. Time to think about pool parties and beach parties and boat trips to Nantucket and the Vineyard and … ell … I don't want to feel all sad and guilty about poor people. I mean, my mother and father give money. They are, like, the biggest contributors to the Cape Cod Symphony and …”

I look over at the boys. Jessie has his headset on. Luke's playing a video game. JFK smiles at me. He shrugs. “I think it's a great idea,” he says, “but fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“It doesn't all have to be in cash,” I say “We can get businesses to contribute, someone to give us the land, a lumber company to supply the wood. And we can all help on-site with the actual building.”

“You mean with hammers and nails?” Tina says. She scrunches her nose, then sighs loudly. “I know you mean well, sweetie, but I agree with Ruby. It just sounds like an awful lot of …
work
… to me. Nobody's making us do this, right? I mean, we all got our twenty-five hours with the library thing, right?”

Every student at Bramble Academy is required to do twenty-five hours of community service during each of our four years of high school. “Well, yes, technically we've all met this year's obligation, but—”

“Willa,” Tina says, tilting her head at me like,
Come on, let it go.
“We're all really busy….”