Cancel the Wedding

by Carolyn T. Dingman

  I knew she was feeling left out. “Don’t worry, really. There’s no rush. This place isn’t going anywhere.” The image of Georgia thumbing through her calendar reminded me of the date. “Mom’s birthday! That’s when we should scatter her ashes.” It was in a few weeks. I knew from watching my father’s birthday loom over us the first year after he died that it would be a bad day anyway. Why not pile all the depression into one really awful horrible bad day?

  “Aw, that’s a good idea, Livie. You and I can fly back down there and spend the night. You can show me the town.”

  Hearing Georgia say “fly back down” made it sound like I would be leaving Tillman any minute, heading back home. Something in my stomach lurched at the thought; for some reason that I couldn’t quite grasp I was in no hurry to leave Tillman.

  Elliott was standing under the tree on the hill. He called out from the small family graveyard. “Hey, I found something!”

  Georgia asked, “Who’s with you?”

  “Elliott and Graham brought us out here by boat.”

  “Oh, Graham is the one Logan likes?”

  I whispered into the phone. “Don’t tell her I told you!”

  “I won’t. And Elliott, is he the old newspaper guy?” Yes, the Wilford Brimleyesque newspaperman. He managed to climb up here with his walker.

  “Yeah, he’s helping us with the research, in case there’s a story there for the paper. And he’s not really that old.” I walked over to Logan and said, “Do you want to talk to Lo?” Then I handed her the phone.

  I wasn’t lying to Georgia about Elliott. She had come up with the idea that he was older all by herself. I didn’t give it to her. I just wasn’t correcting her. She would just worry unnecessarily if she knew that Elliott was, through no fault of his own, very good-looking. I didn’t see the point in bringing it up.

  Logan immediately asked her mom if she could speak to her little brothers. After a beat I heard her voice change to a sweet and caring tone. She was asking Will about his little league game and how his skinned knee was healing. I think she missed her pesky little siblings.

  As I walked up to where Elliott was, he knelt down and wiped some dirt off one of the headstones and wrote down what it said. He folded the page back on the small spiral notebook he was holding and then tucked his pencil behind his ear. He was sweating from the heat of the afternoon and it was making his shirt stick to his back. I could see the outline of his shoulders clearly as I got closer. I slowed down a bit and watched the way his body tensed and moved as he balanced himself. One single bead of sweat trailed down the length of his darkly tanned neck and as I watched it I forgot for just a moment what exactly I was doing there.

  Suddenly he popped up on his feet, snapping me out of my trance. I shook myself back to the present as I approached the small gate. It creaked as I pushed it open and then it stuck so that I had to squeeze through it. I closed it behind me for some reason. Who was I trying to hold in here anyway?

  Elliott wrote something else in his little spiral notebook and then put it in his pocket. I asked, “So what did you find?”

  The graveyard held about thirty plots. Most of the headstones were simple granite pieces carved with names and dates. There was one large obelisk on a dais that was clearly someone important. A few of the newer markers had more elaborate dedications with Bible verses and carved motifs of the life lived. Crossed cavalry swords, bouquets of flowers, hands in prayer.

  Elliott said, “I’ve never even been in here. Isn’t that weird? All the times I’ve been up here and I’ve never come in the cemetery.”

  I squatted down to run my finger along the dates of one of the more weathered stones. Died in eighteen seventy-five. “Well, they probably didn’t put the keg in here, so you had no reason to open the gate.”

  He pushed me over. “Oh look at that. You seem to have fallen.”

  “Elliott!” He was like a kid. I put my hand out and he took it to help me back up, redeeming himself.

  “Olivia, this is your family’s graveyard.” His arms were spread out wide. “These are the Huntley Rutledges. Well, and a few other names thrown in for good measure.” He grabbed my hand and led me to the far side of the fenced-in graveyard. “I think this must be your grandparents.”

  We stood together as we read the inscription on the double headstone. On the right was my grandmother:

  MARTHA CALHOUN RUTLEDGE

  BORN 1910, DIED 1956.

  LOVING WIFE AND DEVOTED MOTHER.

  On the left was my grandfather:

  HON. WINCHESTER TILLMAN RUTLEDGE

  BORN 1906, DIED 1967.

  HONEST, TRUE, AND A FRIEND TO ALL. LOVING HUSBAND

  AND DEVOTED FATHER.

  I realized I was still holding Elliott’s hand and I let go. I cleared my throat. “It’s so strange to be here and see this.”

  Elliott gestured to the surrounding headstones. “Your people go back to the early eighteen hundreds. The big one—”

  “The obelisk.”

  “Right. That’s George Howell Huntley. Huntley County was named for him. He was a Revolutionary War hero. And over there is a whole line of Calhouns and more than one Tillman.”

  Howell, Calhoun, Tillman: these were all the names I had heard from the innkeeper Mrs. Chatham when she was blathering on about the family lines in the town. Now I wished I had paid more attention. Maybe I had the provenance to be one of them. I was starting to understand what it might mean to be one of the Huntley Rutledges.

  I wandered around the small graveyard reading the headstones as Elliott continued to take notes, writing down every name and the date of each headstone. There were so many babies and young children buried here. It was a reminder of how difficult it had once been just to make it to adulthood.

  As I read through all of the names I realized I was recognizing half of the street names in the town. These people, “my people” as Elliott had called them, were an integral part of this community. They had obviously helped to build this area, these towns. It was strange that we never knew about any of it. That we had never been a part of it.

  My sister and I had grown up like nomads. Both of my parents had been only children and both were so much older when they had us that their parents had long since died. We were a family with no ties, no strings or tethers to anyplace or anyone. We were utterly adrift. That had never bothered me. We had our little unit and we were solid. When other people had to endure family gatherings and dinners I just felt sorry for them. And extended family reunions? I would shudder at the thought. All of those strangers that you pretended were family just because you shared a name? Absurd.

  But as I stood there looking at a spot rooted with generations of my family I suddenly felt a little bit lonely. I wanted to have a place that was home. A place that had ties to things that made me who I was before I was ever even a consideration. I wanted a connection to the generations behind me.

  I made a conscious decision to force out any anger I might have felt toward my mother for keeping all of this from us. She had her reasons. I may never know what they were but I had to remind myself that I loved her and trusted her. I may never understand her, but I had to trust her.

  Logan came over and hopped the gate and plopped into the graveyard.

  “A little respect for the place please, Logan.”

  “Sheesh. Sorry. So who are all of these people?”

  “These”—I waved my hands at the headstones—“are your relatives.”

  “Cool.”

  Yes, it was. I would have to see it that way instead of seeing it as something that had been denied me. I had all of this now and that would have to be enough.

  I took some pictures with my cell phone camera and sent them to Georgia and Leo. Logan wandered around laying her illegally picked wildflowers on the graves of the babies and kids.

  I took the paper bag that was holding our picnic lunch and ripped it open until it was a smooth sheet of brown paper. I placed it flat against the carvings of flo
wers on my grandmother’s headstone and used Elliott’s pencil to do a rubbing.

  I was staring at the image of huge mop-headed clusters of flowers that had been transferred to the paper. Elliott stood behind me and looking over my shoulder said, “Hydrangeas.”

  We left the graveyard and spent some more time wandering around the ruins of the house. Well, I wandered around the ruins. Graham and Logan were sunning themselves at the edge of the water and Elliott was fixing a broken cleat on the boat.

  Eventually we spread out our picnic at the dock on the lake. We ate our sandwiches with our feet dangling in the cool water.

  Elliott was flipping through his notebook. “I’ll make you an ancestral chart when we get back. I have a program on my computer we can use. You just plug in the names and dates and it creates the chart.”

  “Thanks. I would really love that.” I turned my attention back to the house and looked at the chimney stacks rising from the ground. “I can’t quite get over being here. Seeing that we’re related to all of these people. I can’t explain what it’s like to go your whole life thinking you don’t have any family and then . . . you stumble across this whole history. It’s just weird.” I thought back to the grace and charm I had encountered since arriving in Tillman. I may be related to them from some long-ago line of people, but I wasn’t like them. “I feel like I don’t really fit in here though.”

  Elliott agreed. “You really don’t.” I was kind of offended, which I think he could read on my face because he started laughing at me. “I meant that as a compliment. It’s nice to talk to someone who actually says what she’s thinking. Sometimes people are so polite that they stop saying anything of any value. It can be tedious, so much civility.”

  “Well, that’s the same everywhere. People here are just a lot more charming about it.”

  Graham butted into the conversation. “We are super charming.” He nudged Logan with his shoulder and she giggled.

  He was a funny kid. I tapped the notebook where Elliott had written all of the names in the cemetery. “How many people were in there?”

  Elliott counted the names. “Thirty-four. I wonder if we can find any photos of them now that we know their full names.”

  Logan said, “Thirty-five.”

  “What?”

  She said, “There were thirty-five graves.”

  Elliott went back through his notes. “Are you sure? I only have thirty-four. I must have missed one.”

  Logan was putting on lip gloss. She smacked her lips. “It didn’t have a name. It was that rock at the edge, like over by the fence. It just has an O carved in it. But why would it be there if it wasn’t a grave?”

  Elliott looked at me and I just shrugged. He flipped to the next page in his notebook and wrote: “O? Date?”

  We finally climbed aboard the boat to head back. As we cruised over the water, I stood with Elliott at the front of the boat because Logan was sitting in the back with Graham.

  Elliott leaned close to me so that I could hear him over the sound of the motor and the wind. “So, what are you two doing tomorrow?”

  “I promised to teach Logan how to drive.”

  Elliott winced. “You might need a drink after that.”

  I laughed. “Definitely.”

  Elliott leaned back into his chair steering the boat effortlessly with two fingers hooked over the edge of the steering wheel. There was a thin, straight tan line from his sunglasses running along the side of his face. The wind whipped around his head, blowing hair in his eyes but he made no move to tame it. He tapped his hand on the edge of the boat; he had made up his mind about something. “I know where we need to go.”

  We? I said, “Has Logan been orchestrating another date?”

  Elliott made a face as if he hadn’t considered Logan and Graham. “Sure, they should come too.”

  We pulled the boat back into the dock where we had stolen it and Elliott parked it easily. Graham jumped out to tie it to the cleat. Elliott said, “So seven o’clock?”

  I smiled and got ready to answer him when Logan cut me off. “What’s at seven?”

  I pulled my eyes away from Elliott with some effort and spoke to Logan. “Elliott thought of a place we all need to go tomorrow night.”

  Logan said, “Cool.” And just like that we had a double date.

  EIGHT

  Logan and I spent the next morning driving slowly around the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store. She was getting the feel of steering and turning, accelerating and stopping.

  Leo called while we were having our illicit driving lesson. I was a little giddy with the freedom of breaking the rules and gushed about how quickly Logan had picked up the basics. Then he heard me tell Logan to stop pushing the gas and break at the same time.

  Leo was not pleased. “Don’t let her drive your car, Livie. Do you have any idea how much it will cost to replace your transmission?”

  I didn’t want Logan to have her confidence shot so I ignored that. “Yes, she’s doing really great. I’ll call you later.”

  Once she got comfortable and was consistently using only her right foot, I let her go out on the back roads a bit. She was actually a pretty good driver. She attributed it to being forced to play video games with her brothers. I attributed it to Logan just being naturally accomplished at everything she tried. I reminded her about seven million times that she could not tell her mom and dad that I had let her drive the car.

  As we followed the winding roads out of Tillman I took over in the driver’s seat. She wasn’t ready for the switchback roads that climbed the mountain. We rolled our windows down to let in the cooler air at the higher altitude.

  I was aimlessly following the road up to the higher points. I was trying to get close to the top of the ridgeline so we could look out over the valley, the town, and the lake below.

  We turned off the main road and began to follow a small gravel street, which continued up the mountain. My hands were gripping the steering wheel as I slowly ascended the road. There was a sheer granite face on my side and a harrowing drop on Logan’s. We were both completely silent in the car, putting all of our mental focus on getting safely up the incline.

  I stopped the car at the first point where the road widened. I decided to turn the car around so it was facing downhill. I wasn’t sure if I would have another chance to do it and I knew there was no way I could reverse all the way back down.

  Once we were safely pointed down the mountain, we climbed out to look for a vista. Logan spotted an overlook, which consisted of a large granite rock cantilevered precariously over the edge of a cliff face, and decided it was a perfect spot to take in the view.

  I said, “Really? This is where you want to sit?” I inched as close to the edge as I dared and looked down at the treetops below me.

  Logan plopped down at the rim of the stone and swung her feet over the edge. “Look at that view, Aunt Liv. Don’t be such a chicken.”

  “Fine, but you are not allowed to plunge to your death.” I moved back as far away from the edge as I could while still being on the rock. “That’s a rule.”

  From this vantage point we could see the entire eastern end of the lake below. I located the marina and then the golf course. I followed the fairways around the lake until they ended at the property known as the Ruins. I pointed it out to Logan. A few boats were tying themselves together in the nearest cove to form a party flotilla below.

  My phone pinged with a text from Leo: Sorry about the car lecture. I’m sure it was fine. Have to catch the overnight to SFO. Be out of pocket till Sun AM. Will call you then. xo

  If he hadn’t signed off with “xo” that text could have gone to anyone. We weren’t communicating very well lately.

  Logan pointed up to her right at the house clinging to the crest of the hill. It was an impressive spread, definitely the largest house I had seen in the area. From where I sat on the rock I could see that there were actually several buildings making up the estate all surrounding an expansive i
nfinity pool pouring out into nothingness. As day turned to afternoon music began to waft out from the house.

  She asked, “Who do you think lives there?”

  I shrugged. “Someone with a lot of cash and a four-wheel drive.”

  I wanted to get off that deathtrap of a rock, but Logan didn’t want to leave the view. I had to lure her away with the promise of adventure at the end of the road.

  As we followed the footpath up the hill I was losing pace with Logan. I called out to her, “Slow down!”

  She never broke her stride. “Come on, Livie. You’re way out of shape.”

  I grabbed a pine cone from the ground and threw it at her. It missed. “I just wanted to walk up to the ridge, not have an Outward Bound experience.” Logan finally stopped and waited for me then made a point to walk at my pace.

  After a while of walking in silence she said, “You know what’s weird about you and Elliott?”

  Me and Elliott? “There is no me and Elliott, Logan.” I kicked a rock and watched it scuttle into the underbrush. I couldn’t imagine what she had conjured in her imagination.

  Logan continued, as I knew she would. “You’re all silly with him. Like playful. You two are always laughing about something.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “He’s just a nice guy and we’re very busy playing matchmaker for you and Graham.”

  She made a sarcastic sort of grunting noise. “Yeah right, this is all about me. You should see the way he watches you. And when—”

  “He doesn’t watch me. He’s just being—”

  “Don’t say polite, Livie. It’s totally different. You guys find ways to touch each other, like constantly.”

  “What? We don’t touch each—”

  “You do. You’re always shoving or smacking each other. It’s cool. I mean it’s kind of sweet.”