“So glad you folks came out to visit today. I was a little surprised at your call this morning,” he said. “We’re really just getting started out here. I think Morton has talked to a few people, but you’ll be our first event.” He gestured to the white canvas awning behind him. “As you can see, this will be our tent for your reception. We have seating here for three hundred and can set up a bar on the side.” Yancey dabbed at raindrops on his forehead with his hankie, then returned it his pants pocket. Much thinner than his brother, his suit seemed to hang on him.
Morton came up the road in his green pickup truck. The door squeaked loudly as he opened it. Putting on his baseball cap, he joined our little group. Morton put his burly arm around my shoulders.
“Mrs. Livingston, I just have to show you the altar God created for us,” Morton said.
“Morty, I was about to get to that,” said his brother.
“Sorry, big brother, I got excited,” said Morton, not removing his grasp on me. We walked a few feet closer to the woods. “I’ve personally planted white roses to encircle the altar. I’ve studied flowers from all over the state and believe they will add a beautiful ambiance to your vows. This here is an altar that God created,” he smiled bashfully, “with a little help from me.”
“Morty is a member of the community church. We’re expecting plenty of church picnics and barbecues out here. Did you bring the brochure for these nice folks?” Yancey asked.
Morton Fischer tapped his forehead. “Shoot, sorry. It’s back in the truck, I’ll just go get it.”
“Catch up with us, then,” Yancey said. “Morton can be forgetful sometimes, but you sure can’t choose your family when you need them for a business partner.”
We walked toward a line of large trees that created a natural cathedral sanctuary in the way they lined the field.
“Right now most of the leaves are gone, of course, but in the spring and summer the effect is outstanding. Right here we have all the best parts of Pecan Bayou – the water, the trees and the glory of Texas.”
We stood gazing at the crisscross patterns of the scraggly branches connecting the trees. I opened up my white planning notebook and started taking notes. Morton returned to the group, holding out a glossy brochure of Chateau Fischer Event Center.
“Oh, I see you got one those fancy wedding planners,” Yancey said, looking over my shoulder.
“Yes, we were lucky to get him. He’s really helped organize all the little details. I need to give you his card.” I said, fishing a card out of the binder. “He likes to be in contact with all of the local merchants we employ to sort of coordinate it all from mission control.”
Yancey took the card. “Excellent, we can contact …” He looked down at the purple-trimmed card with Mr. Andre’s picture in the corner, “Uh, Mr. Andrew.”
Morton looked at the picture and scratched his head.
“Mr. Andre,” Leo said. “He hates it when people mispronounce his name.”
“A little pretentious for this part of Texas, don’t you think?” said Yancey.
“Pretention is what wedding planning is all about,” Leo said dryly.
The boys were now running around in the field behind us. The rain had let up, and it was turning into a wonderful day. In an impromptu game of tag, Tyler was chasing Zach, who was getting dangerously close to the bank of the bayou.
“Zach, be careful, you could fall in!” I called out, trying not to notice the mud they were kicking up.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I don’t see any gators out there.”
“Gators?” Leo said. “Do you have many gators coming up on the shore?”
Morton took off his ball cap and scratched his head. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
Yancey put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Like Morton said, God’s cathedral, this area. It was surely meant to be the perfect wedding venue for lovely people like you.”
Leo kept looking out at the water. “What body of water does this bayou feed off of?”
“Don’t know, “Morton said. “Just know it’s a bunch of muddy water, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It trickles in and out of most of the land around here.”
“What would you do if a gator did come on shore?” I asked.
Yancey smiled and spoke with a note of condescension in his voice. “Now, don’t you worry about that. You’re not one of those crazy brides like I’ve been seeing on TV, are you?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “My bridezilla side won’t come out as long as nothing comes out of the bayou.”
Yancey plastered on a smile, showing a glittering gold bicuspid. “Shall we discuss payment options?”
******
Cal Carter, a baker approved by Mr. Andre, slid out two plates with several tiny pieces of cake on them.
“Just try these, folks. I can guarantee you’re going to have a hard time choosing which one to use for your wedding day.”
“Mmm, delicious,” I said as a mouth watering white mango cake melted in my mouth. Both boys took a bite of the cake and rolled their eyes in delight.
“Oooh, try this one,” Leo said, spooning some dark chocolate into my mouth. Gulping down the previous cake, I tried to clear my palate enough to taste the chocolate. It didn’t take long until the cocoa hit my taste buds. Zach and Tyler followed suit. Leo had switched over to the white mango.
“I had no idea getting married could be so fun,” he said, licking his lips.
“And I thought cake meant chocolate or vanilla.” Tyler said, a bit of chocolate icing still on the corner of his mouth.
“Folks, if you keep eating all my samples I’ll have to charge you for a whole cake,” Cal said. “Now I can always do the wedding cake in white and groom’s cake in chocolate.”
“Groom’s cake?” said Leo.
“Sure, it’s a wedding tradition to have a groom’s cake at the reception.”
“For double the price,” Leo said as Cal smiled.
“The groom’s cake has a lot less work to it. We only charge half.”
Looking at the prices in Cal’s cake book, half could still make a person gag enough to need a glass of milk to wash it down.
“It all seems delicious to me. Leo, you decide.” I said.
“Okay,” he said, sure of himself when it came to cake. “Mango on the wedding cake, dark chocolate on the groom’s cake.”
“Are you sure?”
“Most definitely.”
“That was easy,” I said.
“Wonderful,” Cal said, taking out an order form from behind the counter. “We’ll be happy to set you up. What day is your wedding?”
“February 14th,” I replied.
“As in Valentine’s Day, February 14th?”
“That’s the one.”
Cal took out his order pad and started figuring. “That is one of our busiest days of the year here. I already have several special orders in place. I’m afraid I’ll have to hire some extra help to get your wedding cake out.”
Leo and I looked at each other as we could hear the cash register ringing in the baker’s head. “I’m going to have to add an additional fifty dollars for holiday pay.”
“Holiday pay? Last time I checked, Valentine’s Day is not really a big cake-eating holiday,” I said.
“Are you kidding me? We make cookies, truffles, cupcakes. Not everybody likes flowers and candy you know,” he said. “Fifty more.” Cal, who had seemed so nice when we came in, wasn’t budging.
Leo and I searched each other’s eyes for agreement as he cut in again. “We take credit cards.”
“This is much tougher than we ever thought it would be,” I said.
“You’re not the first bride to say that. Just take your time and think about who is going to be at your wedding. This cake needs to be for you, but it also needs to be for your guests. Think of your wedding cake the same way you thought of your bouquets of flowers for your bridesmaids. You wouldn’t pick a bouquet of flowers that you knew a bridesmaid was allergic to, right?
”
“Don’t confuse us. The flower guy is another exciting Saturday for us,” Leo said.
Cal laughed as he removed the cake plate from the counter.
“Have you done any new weddings with Lenny Stokes?” I asked. “He’s got a bit of a reputation for being hard to work with, but he has some beautiful flowers.”
“Lenny Stokes?” said Cal. “I’m probably not the right man to be asking about Mr. Stokes.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, let’s just say Lenny and I don’t always get along, and it’s not just at weddings that we find ourselves disagreeing,” he said. “Lenny and I both belong to the same shooting range. I go down every Monday night sure as clockwork to do some target practice. For years I arrived there at 6 o’clock to use the first shooting lane. I like that one because there’s only noise on one side. Then, last year I would get there at six and Lenny would be there already shooting in the first lane. Lenny figured out my schedule and he was getting there at 5:45. So I started coming at 5:30, but darn it if next week if he didn’t show up at 5:15. I think he didn’t care as much about shooting as getting the hell in front of me. When I confronted him, you know what he said?”
“What?” I asked.
“This is my lane. Move on, dough boy.”
I wondered if using Lenny Stokes was just asking for trouble. I opened my planning notebook and made a note: “Find Baskets of Bluebonnets phone number.”
As we exited the bakery feeling slightly fleeced, we drove back into Pecan Bayou to get a cup of coffee to wash down all the cake we’d consumed. The boys were bouncing off the backseat from their combined sugar highs. We would soon become a family of four, and I wondered if Leo felt as overwhelmed as I did at the prospect.
As I stirred my latte I looked over at Leo. He drummed at the table with his fingers and looked out the window at the chilly winter day, lost in thought. We had so many decisions to finalize in the next few weeks, one of which was where the four of us would live. I just assumed that Leo would move here to Pecan Bayou with my family and into my house.
I had my family here, a family that had held me together for the last ten years. Leo picked up the edge of his napkin with his fingers and played with it, then he turned his gaze to me and cleared his throat.
“Betsy,” he reached into his coat pocket. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to share with you.” I felt a slight panic chill the warmth the coffee had produced. Was this his long-concealed criminal record? That couldn’t be right – my dad had done a background check on Leo the first month he knew him. Could it be a confidential medical record? Was he dying, or worse, was he in debt? He pulled a piece of folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his black suede jacket and flattened it out on the table in front of me.
“This,” he said, “is a house I’ve found for us.” I looked at a picture of a beautiful two-story tan brick home with cathedral ceilings and plenty of square feet. It was enough room for all of us to live in style.
“My God, Leo. It’s beautiful,” I said, reading the particulars of the listing. My eye glanced at the price. “Can we afford this?”
“Well, we won’t be buying it outright,” he said, “but yes, I did some figuring on my salary, and it’s in our price range.”
“How much do you make?”
“I love it that you’re just getting around to asking me that. I make enough so that if you didn’t want to work, you wouldn’t have to.”
I felt a little panic hit. “You do want me to work, don’t you? You aren’t someone who feels a woman’s place is in the home?”
“I do feel the woman’s place is in the home, if that’s what she wants. If she wants to go out and knock over the Dallas market with her incredibly useful column on Helpful Hints, then I’ll support her in that as well.”
I sipped at my coffee and looked at the house. Zach put his head on my shoulder as he perused the brochure.
“Cool, Mom. It has a pool,” he said.
It was twice as big as my house. Leo had picked out a family home. The kind of place we could settle into and raise a family, our boys and maybe more to come. Who could turn down a beautiful house like this one?
“What about my family here in Pecan Bayou?”
Leo took hold of my hand and rubbed his thumb along the back of it. “I know your family is very important to you and Zach. That’s been the hardest part of all of this. I love you both and I want you to be happy. I also want to be able to provide for you, and to do that, I need to work in a large urban area.”
Leo worked as a private meteorologist for the Dallas airport. Before that, he had spent some time working for the local television station, mostly as scientific support. Occasionally he still appeared as one of the many people TV news loved to plop in front of a rising storm. On one level I understood that we couldn’t mess with his job and that my job was portable. But on another level, I felt the need to cling to the people I had always loved the most.
“What about my dad and Aunt Maggie? How do you think Danny would take it?”
Leo continued to hold my hand. “Not well, I suppose. But they could come and visit us any time, and it’s only a few hours from Pecan Bayou to Dallas. Believe me, I know, because I’ve been burning up the road for the past few years. I love you so much, Betsy, and I need you to understand I’m doing the best I can to make our lives work.”
“And that dream didn’t include a slightly quirky small town on the edge of the Hill Country?”
Leo tapped at the picture of the house. “Just take a look at this, Betsy, and try to consider it. We can’t say “I do” and then not know where to go after the honeymoon.”
He was right. I knew he was right, but I just couldn’t find myself compromising. I knew I had compromised way too much in my first marriage. One thing I had learned was that I needed to make sure we had an equal share in the decision-making.
This, though, felt like a done deal.
CHAPTER FOUR
A week later, I carefully placed each and every wedding invitation in the mailbox outside the supermarket. We were at six weeks before the big day, which was a little under the deadline for sending them out, but Mr. Andre pushed the printer to do a rush job. I had struggled with the idea of inviting my mother even after my discussion with Leo.
She had missed so much in my life. Maybe my invitation would be a way of showing her I’d grown into someone who understands family and the connections that need to be respected and reinforced. Her invitation was on the bottom of the stack, and I wasn’t even sure why I had brought it with me to the mailbox.
“Mom? Are you praying to the mailbox?”
Zach had been waiting in the backseat of the car but had scrambled out of his seatbelt. He stuck his head out the window, reminding me of Butch, our ever-excited Weimaraner.
“Nope,” I responded. “Well, maybe.”
“Pretty strange. Is this a bridezilla thing?” Zach had overheard Leo calling me his new pet name. So far, I had been a pretty reasonable bride. At least I thought so.
“No, this isn’t a bridezilla thing,” I insisted. I found myself holding my breath as I dumped the stack into the blue metal mailbox. It wasn’t until after I released the invitations from my grip that I realized what I had done. I had mailed my mother’s invitation. I opened the slot and tried to see if maybe it was resting on the top. No such luck. It was done.
Thirty minutes later I was checking out the tomatoes in the produce section of the grocery store when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see a woman holding a home-sewn grocery bag. Her gray hair was piled up on her head in a bun.
“Excuse me, aren’t you Betsy Livingston?” she asked. This was probably someone who read my helpful hints column.
Rocky Whitson, the editor of the Pecan Bayou Gazette, had insisted we put my picture at the top of my weekly sharing of household wisdom. He said it made it more personable for the reader. I found it a little embarrassing, and I was pretty sure it hadn
’t done anything to raise the subscription rates at the paper. Sometimes people would recognize me and want to talk about things like stains and better ways to clean their garbage disposals. I remembered talking about wood rot at a funeral once – truly awkward.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
“I thought so.” She clasped her hands together and smiled. “I’m Martha Stokes, Lenny Stokes’s wife?”
She was the wife of the flower guy I was supposed to have called.
“I’m so glad I ran into you like this,” she said. “I was going to call you this week anyway, but this just saves me trying to track down your phone number. You know how us older folks forget where we put things.”
“Well … great,” I said, wishing she had called. It would have been one less job for me to do.
“We were so happy you decided to use our flowers on your wedding day. We have a lovely crop that will be in bloom just in time for your big day. I think that’s so sweet getting married on Valentine’s Day. I’m surprised you’re the only bride who asked us for floral arrangements.”
I remembered all of the horror stories I had been hearing about her husband. If I could try to confine my dealings to her, maybe it wouldn’t be a complete fiasco.
“Yes, well, Mrs. Stokes …”
“Martha, dear, call me Martha,” she said.
“Martha, I need to tell you we’ve hired a wedding planner. Have you ever worked with Mr. Andre?” I asked.
“No, I think I would remember a name like that.” She tugged at the long sleeve of her coat, pulling it over her wrist.
“Well, he wants to come out and look over your operation and put you on his approved vendors list.”
“Really, dear? That would be wonderful,” Martha said. “Having an ‘in’ with a wedding planner might be just the kind of networking we need for our business. To be perfectly honest with you, yours was the only order we had for February. Other times of the year, our business keeps us quite busy with the wildflower season and all of the summer brides. In these winter months, though, money can get pretty thin. Your order was not enormous, but every little bit helps, you know.”
Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) Page 3
