Wedding

by Ann Herendeen

  “Filthy?” Dominic says. “That’s a peculiar choice of word from a man in your position.” He finds his sword belt, unbuckled but never far from reach, draws the blade. “And you will leave my lady wife out of your thoughts and your words,” he says. “My lord.”

  Roger has found his own sword, is unfazed by Dominic’s belligerence. “Why don’t you leave her out?” he says.

  The men rise to their knees, tugging at their lowered breeches, and I’m convulsed with pain, the beginning of labor. We all feel it, the men doubling over, clutching their stomachs—Dominic, who has not broken the connection between us, and Roger, who has still, despite everything, stayed in the communion, savoring the aftereffects of love.

  Dominic! I call him, unable to suppress the cry for help. He is my lord husband, and when I am in distress it is to him I turn, no matter how we have hurt each other recently, or who is with him. Oh, Dominic, help me!

  Birth will be published in mid-October.

  Recognition, Book One in the ECLIPSIS series of Lady Amalie’s memoirs, and Choices, Book Two, are available for Kindle and Nook, and all e-book formats.

  “The Guy in Frankie’s Hatbox”

  By T. T. Thomas

  Frankie Bristol drank a bit of Port each evening, and she usually poured the first glass before she even took off her hat.

  Frankie, along with her elderly mother, was the neighbor two doors down. The first thing I noticed about her was that she wore hats. Every day she wore a different hat. In fact, she’d leave with one hat on in the morning, and get off the bus each evening with a different hat.

  The year was 1952; the place was Peoria, Illinois. I was seven years old, and had just celebrated my seventh birthday on April 7. Seven on the seventh: It felt special. We had moved into a brand new house, a little clapboard cottage with green shutters, a gravel driveway, and a big front and back yard, on Lake Street, the prior September.

  I had almost completed first grade, which I didn’t like, and I didn’t like it for a very good reason. Each day I had to leave my mom. I felt sick all day until I got back home after school. When I told my mom, she said everyone my age had to go to school. “When I was growing up in Ireland,” she’d begin, “some kids even had to go to work at your age.” I reminded my mom that I was only seven, and she always looked surprised. Did she think I was older? “Well, you’re lucky to get an education at all,” she concluded, with an Irish accent that was somewhere between a typical gruff brogue and the lyrical cadence of a beautiful ballad.

  For the first six months, we had only four neighbors: Frankie and her mom, Mr. and Mrs. Bill DeJarnette, the Stuarts, who had two boys, one my age, and Mr. Bob Davis and his wife, Belle, who had a three-legged dog named Dusty. The Davis’ didn’t actually live in one of the twelve new houses, but they owned a large old house with apple, peach and pear trees at one end of the neat little row of bungalows. The rest of the houses on Lake were empty but sold. I wondered if any of the new neighbors would have any girl kids.

  When I’d visit Frankie, I always thought her house smelled odd. It was somewhere between minty and moldy. I told my friend Jerry Stuart, and he said maybe the smell was from all the feathers in the hats. I laughed and advised him that most of Frankie’s hats did not have feathers. Then Jerry said, well, his mom said no one had that many hats, anyway.

  “Frankie does so!” I protested. “I’ve seen them. She must have hundreds.”

  His mom’s name was Signe, and she was Swedish, so I wasn’t sure if Swedish people knew about hats. They knew about coffee cake, though, because she would phone my mom when she had baked a new coffee cake, always after I left for school. I never had any coffee cake, and I didn’t even know what it looked like, but it sounded like something I would like. The only sweets I ever tasted were Signe’s cookies. They were good, but we only got a couple. Mom said asking for more would be “considered impolite.” She had a long list of what things would be “considered,” if you did them. Like my dad, Jerry’s dad was “in the War,” too, but he was in the Merchant Marines. Signe said my mom and her were war brides, but when I asked my mom about it, she said she didn’t particularly like that term. She said she always thought of the English girls when she thought of war brides.

  During my visits with Frankie, as I followed her from room to room, I feigned nonchalance as I surreptitiously looked around for all the hats. I expected to see hats in the linen closet when she opened it. I was sure I’d see them on the bed, on the dresser, or in a chair, but I never saw more than one or two hats, and not a single feather. But when Frankie slid her bedroom closet door open, I did see something I’d never seen before on an upper shelf of the closet.

  “What are the round boxes for?” I asked Frankie.

  “Hat boxes, uh huh,” she said, as she slid the door closed.

  Well, what did I expect? Jerry Stuart’s the same kid who told me we’d reach China if we dug down far enough.

  Over the next few years, things changed for Frankie and for hats. Her old mother died, and Frankie seemed afraid. “Don’t know what I’m working so hard for, anymore, Margaret,” she’d say to my mom.

  “Well, the place wouldn’t be the same without you, Frankie. People trust you when it comes to hats.”

  A few weeks later, my mom came home with a new hat she had bought from Frankie. It was grey satin, and it matched her new grey suit. We had our family portrait taken for my dad’s birthday, and mom wore the grey suit and hat. She had one photograph taken of her and then one of my two sisters and me. The photographer put the pictures in a double frame, and it was for my dad to keep on his desk at the office. Mom said all men have to have pictures of their family on their desks. Before she wrapped it up, though, she showed it to Frankie.

  “Now your mother knows a sophisticated hat, uh huh,” Frankie said to me one evening. “Of course being European, she would,” Frankie said.

  “What’s ‘sophisticated?’” I asked.

  “Oh it’s a look,” Frankie said. “It’s tasteful, a bit reserved, the classics, uh huh.”

  After her mom was gone, I’d visit Frankie during the long summer evenings. I always had to stand at her front door. She never invited me in after her mom died. She’d stand on the other side of the screen, glass of Port in hand, chatting. My mother “checked in” on Frankie every week or so. Somehow, she was invited in. Afterwards, she’d come home shaking her head. “I think Frankie is losing her mind.”

  Sometimes, mom would say, “Al, have you lost your mind?” to my dad, so when she said Frankie was losing hers, I didn’t give it much importance. I thought it was something mom said to make you laugh because it always made my dad laugh when she said it.

  For the next couple of years, Frankie continued to work, leaving every morning with a feather in her cap, coming home every evening with a pillbox on her head. One day, I came home from school, and my mother was sitting at the dining room table looking at what she called “crystal.” There were, she said, pointing to the different shapes, dessert goblets, cordial glasses, wine glasses, and water glasses. Most were clear glass, some were light green, and others the palest shade of pink. Sixteen in all, service for four. A gift from Frankie.

  My mom said, “Frankie said, ‘You always admired these, Margaret, and I want you to have them.’” Mom sounded more sad than happy, and she shook her head as if trying to shake a thought out of her brain.

  I learned a few things about hats from Frankie.

  “Easter’s big,” Frankie would say to me. “June is next, uh huh. Wedding season, you know. You’ve got both mothers, all the bridesmaids, usually, and sisters and aunts of the bride and bridegroom. You never call them grooms,” she added. “Grooms clean out horse stalls.”

  “What about Christmas?” I asked.

  “Not as big as it used to be,” Frankie said. “Women these days are turning to scarves.” She dismissed the trend with a tone of mild annoyance. “Scarves are for necks,” she said. “But winter hats are not so exciting,” she
admitted. “Spring is when you get your great hats. I’m going to be working non-stop up to Easter, uh huh,” she said, sipping her Port.

  I don’t know when I first noticed, but sometime after that Easter, Frankie stopped going to work. My mother waved away my questions and said, “Business is down at the hat shop.” That was about 1956. I was eleven. As spring became summer, I often walked past Frankie’s house, but it was all closed up---doors closed, blinds down, no one around. I thought that was strange because everyone knew how hot and humid it could get in Peoria. One late afternoon, I decided to “check on Frankie.” After I knocked for a long time, the heavy front door opened a few inches. There was a single lamp on in the background with a dull light bulb revealing stacks of papers, miscellaneous wine glasses on the coffee table, and a strange old woman at the door. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth and revealed a dulled front tooth I recognized as hers that I realized it was Frankie.

  “Yes?” she said. She acted like she didn’t know me.

  For a moment, I was speechless. Finally, “Hi Frankie. How are you?”

  “Not so good, but I have to get ready for work now,” she said, and she closed the door without so much as a smile.

  I wandered around Mr. DeJarnette’s back yard for a while. The DeJarnette’s were at work. I saw their cat Suzy sitting in the shade under a couple big Sunflowers, so I knelt down, petted Suzie for a while and wondered idly where Tuffy and Tippy were. They were Suzie’s sons. Frankie didn’t have any children, but she used to talk about some guy that was dead now. Later I learned his name was Guy, and he died shortly after “the War.”

  My dad was in the same war as everyone else, and he flew a glider. He missed the wedding because he couldn’t tell her about the Invasion of Normandy, which he was in. He crashed the glider in France, but he always said his co-pilot didn’t follow his orders and brought the nose of the plane down too fast. Dad was in charge. Somehow, after his injuries healed, he married mom. When she told the story about him missing the wedding, I was initially horrified to imagine her at the church with no bridegroom.

  “Mom, you didn’t know anything? You had no idea?” I squealed.

  “Well, if I did, I surely couldn’t let on,” she said. “He wasn’t supposed to tell me about the invasion,” she’d add with a smile. With that smile, I knew she was taking me into her confidence. I felt proud. I had secrets. September 22. That’s when they finally got married. Mom said both Frankie and Guy were “in retail,” her at the hat shop, him at Schradskies department store. He went through a whole war then died after he got home. My dad crashed a plane with no engine, then married mom.