The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  “Aren’t the orchids gorgeous?” Sis turns to admire the exotic flowers shooting out in all directions above the tables with their soft white and brown spotted yellows and bright pinks. She spent all yesterday afternoon with Ray wrapping the satin ribbon around the bouquets and molding the oasis into the enormous silver vases and moss covered urns.

  “Not as gorgeous as the priest walking your way,” her mama says. “Hold your shoulders back, dear.” Mrs. Mims quickly hobbles under the tent with her elegant cane to give Sis some space.

  “Hi, Sis,” Capers says. He gently touches her elbow. “The music was glorious as usual.”

  Sis corrects her posture and smiles up at him. “Thank you. I thought your homily was the best I’ve heard.”

  Capers pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket and pats his forehead. The air is swampy. Sis can practically feel her makeup melting.

  “Let me get you a Bellini,” Capers says, motioning toward one of the servers passing by. “I heard the Giornellis brought their own family recipe.”

  He reaches out and grabs two glasses off the tray.

  “Thank you.” She smiles and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve never tried one.”

  Just as he lifts his glass for a toast, Vangie Dreggs comes up behind Capers and pats him on the back. “Are those Bellinis?”

  “Yes, I believe they are.” He notices Vangie staring at his glass, and he says, “Want to try one?”

  “Why, thank you,” she says, and she grabs the drink out of his hands. “Reverend, I need to talk to you for a few minutes if I could. Do you mind, Sis?”

  Sis steps back and blushes. “Oh, of course not.”

  “I’ll catch up with you in a little while,” Capers calls to Sis.

  “All right.” Sis scoots under the tent and finds her mother talking to Cousin Willy.

  “Come see what Kitty B. has cooked up, gal,” Willy says to her. He has a heaping plate of pickled shrimp and sausage balls. “I’ve got to eat fast before Ray puts me back to work.”

  “Where’s the priest?” Mrs. Mims whispers.

  “Oh, Mama.” Sis rolls her eyes and leads the elderly lady over to the S-shaped tables crammed with silver trays of ham biscuits, pickled shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, venison pâté, fruit and cheese in ornately carved-out watermelons, smoked salmon with all the trimmings, sausage balls, and pimento cheese garnished with little cocktail pickles.

  Sis’s mama gets a nibble of shrimp and a ham biscuit and points to another corner of the tent where Richadene’s brother, Melvin, is carving a beef tenderloin and serving it on rolls with horseradish and mayonnaise. Next to Melvin, R.L.’s chef friend from Savannah is serving up shrimp and grits in large martini glasses.

  Kitty B. scurries over. “Aren’t those martini glasses fun! Y’all need to get over there and try some shrimp and grits.”

  “Kitty B.,” Sis’s mama says as she grabs a champagne glass from one of the servers. “You have done a beautiful job with the food. Your mama would be awfully proud.”

  “Thank you.” Kitty B.’s cheeks redden.

  A server whispers in Kitty B.’s ear and she says, “Excuse me. It’s nearly time to cut the cake. I do hope you’ll try a piece.” She points toward the center of the tent and hurries toward the cake, displayed in all of its glory with the bridesmaids’ bouquets all around it.

  It’s Kitty B.’s specialty: a lemon sour cream pound cake with a little hint of Grand Marnier liqueur. Each tier is iced with an ivory-colored buttercream and decorated with pearl drops and an elegant piped pearl border. A cascade of real white orchids starts at the top tier and curls its way down the side to the bottom, encircling the base with delicate white petals and dark pink centers.

  Sis helps her mama to a seat and surveys the room. The beach music band, the Embers, are performing the hits that she and Fitz used to shag to on the boardwalk at Myrtle Beach, and Priscilla is already dancing with the doctor friend of Giuseppe’s. His name is Donovan or something grand like that, and he’s a medical resident at Johns Hopkins. Priscilla’s pale brown dreadlocks are flapping in the warm breeze like limp snakes. The young man appears clean-cut and handsome, and wouldn’t Ray be thrilled over the possibility of someone usurping the place of Poop 2? Sis shudders at the thought of that smelly stunt fool from the absurd reality cable show.

  Ray comes over and leans in close to Sis and her mama. “She let me do her makeup,” Ray whispers, and they all admire Priscilla and her partner on the dance floor. “She even let me cover up her tattoo with my concealer.” Ray pats her own eye in excitement and then bites her lip from the pain.

  “I noticed,” Sis says. “Now sit down and take a break, gal. You are going to wear yourself out.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Ray,” says Sis’s mama. “You’ve done a splendid job with this wedding.” She pats the seat next to hers. “Let me tell you how impressed I am with your talents.”

  Sis smiles as Ray takes a seat and leans in toward her mother. The Embers are singing, “It’s a beautiful morning . . . I think I’ll go outside for a while and just smi-i-ile,” and Donovan must have some southern roots because he spins Priscilla around like he’s a card-carrying member of the Sandfiddler’s Shag Club. Bless Ray’s heart—she’s had fantasies about Priscilla’s wedding for decades now. She’s tried to set her up with many a fine young man from the Lowcountry, but it always backfires on her. Priscilla is bright as a button, but she couldn’t be any more opposite from Ray.

  Maybe it’s an act of rebellion or just that she’s different, but she has no interest in the society life her mother adores. Maybe she’s got the Laura or the Carla Jones gene, or perhaps she’s just a purebred member of this new generation of young people who seem to want to flee their roots as fast as possible and chase after the kind of free-spirited life that Roger the cellist pursued back in the ’60s.

  Sis wonders who will carry on the social traditions of Jasper after she and the gals are gone—but it’s not something that upsets her the way it does Ray. It is simply something that she is curious about. The town is changing, Ray is right about that. But then again, maybe it’s time for a change.

  Much of the staff from Senator Warren’s office is here to support their chief-of-staff, Giuseppe. The Senator herself arrived at the church in a limousine, and she stands just outside of the tent now, whispering to an aide, her brown heels sinking into the thick mud. Behind her Sis notices an osprey diving into the water. It comes back up with a four-inch-long mullet, its wet tail flapping back and forth in an effort to break free. The osprey takes flight above the seawall, and the fish’s tail drips water over several of the guests outside of the tent. The bird nearly loses hold of the mullet right over Senator Warren’s head, and just when Sis thinks the fish is going to flap right into her martini glass of shrimp and grits, the bird strengthens its grip, recovers the mullet, and soars to the top of one of the live oak trees for his own celebratory feast. Whew!

  Well, that’s the way it is with weddings and life in general as far as Sis can tell, one near disaster after another and a whole lot of ignorant bliss.

  Senator Warren clinks Senator Hollingsworth’s glass of champagne, and they laugh in a nice moment of bipartisanship. Rupert and his dentist dance in an embrace, and all of the guests seem swept up in the joy of the celebration as they dance and toast and hug one another. Salvatore, the Italian uncle, plays his trumpet beside the band as the bride and groom dance. The mosquitoes bite despite the two zappers Cousin Willy set up along the edges of the gardens, and from time to time someone slaps at their neck or their arm.

  The couple must have cut the cake somewhere along the way because Kitty B. passes out thick pieces on the china plates they pooled together from their own collections.

  “Would you look at that?” Sis’s mama says as they watch Katie Rae kissing her date intensely at a table in the corner. He is supposed to be very religious. His daddy is the pastor of one of the hand-raising nondenominational chur
ches outside of Charleston where Vangie Dreggs goes to hear speakers. She gave them all a book she bought there called The Purpose-Driven Life, and she wants to start a Bible study in her home and teach them how to say prayers to heal people, of all things.

  “The purpose of her life is to drive us crazy,” Ray declared after the vestry meeting a few weeks ago in which Sis had to make a presentation about the music offerings for the fall.

  When Sis looks over to the dance floor she sees Capers shagging with Vangie as the Embers play “Sweet Carolina Girls.”

  “As if,” Ray comes over to say. “As if she is a sweet Carolina girl.” “Yes.” Hilda slides over in her one moment of composure. “How about pushy cowgirl with a butt the size of the state from whence she came!”

  “Hilda!” Sis says, covering her mama’s ears.

  “Well, come on,” Hilda says. “She could give Kitty B. a run for her money. Sis, you want me to go pour a glass of red wine on her dress?”

  “Ladies.” Cousin Willy shuffles over with his index finger raised to his lips. They giggle as if they are sixteen and in the watermelon field again as he scratches his bald head, which glows in the mid-afternoon, post-storm humidity.

  “Where’ve you been?” Ray says. “I haven’t seen you in an hour.”

  He lifts up his duck boots to reveal the mud caked up to his shins.

  “You don’t wanna know,” he says.

  “Oh yes, we do,” she says.

  “Getting rid of a copperhead.”

  “What?” Hilda says.

  “The storm must have flushed one out of the swamp because just before the church let out, I found the rascal over by Miss C. Justin and I trapped him with a shovel and put him in a pillowcase.”

  “Good heavens!” Ray squeals and even Hilda laughs out loud. “What size?”

  “’Bout four feet,” he says.

  Ray rolls her eyes. “What would the senators have thought of us then? With a copperhead snaking around the tent!”

  Now Sis watches Angus walk over and pat Hilda on the back, to which she bristles. “Well, our daughter looks happy,” he says. “Quite a pair, don’t you think?” He pats her back once more and puts his hand back to his side.

  Hilda does not respond. She stands up and steps to the side of the tent to greet an old suitemate of hers from Converse College.

  Angus pulls a handkerchief out of his jacket and pats his brow and looks around the tent at the wedding he hosts. He nods to Sis and her mama and then to a couple that go dancing by. Before long, old Mr. Jameson hobbles up to him, pointing to a dark spot on the top of his right hand. Angus turns to the side, puts on his glasses, and examines the man’s hand with care.

  “Are they like in the mafia?” Sis hears Priscilla ask Cousin Willy and Ray with a naughty intrigue in her eye.

  “No,” Ray says. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, what’s with the bag o’ cash?” Priscilla points.

  Sis had heard about the money bag Hilda was sewing, but she’d forgotten about it in all of the hoopla.

  Now she sees it dangling from Little Hilda’s wrist—a white satin bag with a silk rope tie—and one by one Giuseppe’s friends and family saunter up to the dancing couple and slip an envelope inside of it.

  Will Capers ever ask Sis to dance? After all, she spent a fortune on this dress trying to get him to notice her, but now he nibbles on shrimp and grits with Vangie on a live oak tree limb that touches the ground outside of the tent.

  “I’m tired.” Sis hears her mama’s voice, turns toward her, and nods.

  “I’ll take you back to my apartment.”

  As Sis watches her mama stride on her high heels through the parking lot of the apartment building, she wonders if her mama worries about her, that she has no husband, and no daughter for whom to plan a wedding. Her mama rarely brings it up, but Sis senses it upsets her from time to time. Sis knows her mama wonders who will look after her when her mama is gone.

  Well, of course it’s been tough being the old maid of the town, but in some ways it’s probably not as bad as poor Hilda, whose husband left her. It breaks Sis’s heart to think of Hilda’s dark room and the pillows in the space next to her in bed. Maybe she should tell the other gals about it. They don’t usually talk about that sort of thing. That is, some subjects, usually the most painful ones, are just off limits in their friendship foursome, but it might be time to change that too.

  After Sis gets her mama in the apartment, her cell phone rings.

  “Hey, Sis. It’s Capers.”

  “Hey there.”

  “Listen, I was hoping to get a chance to dance with you,” he says. “Want to meet me at the seawall at sunset?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Just let me get Mama settled and see if the gals need me to help shut things down.”

  “All right,” he says. “I’ve got my own Embers CD in the car, and we can dance all night if you want.”

  Dance all night? Now that certainly doesn’t sound like something Father Mothball would say, but then again, she thinks he’s partaken of a few glasses of champagne and maybe his guard is down, which could be a very good thing.

  “Sounds like fun,” Sis says. “See you in a little bit.”

  When she turns her back her mama is already on her way to the guest room. “Don’t you worry about me,” she says. “You just get on back to that priest.” She grins at Sis.

  “Oh, Mama,” Sis says.

  “Don’t ‘Mama’ me,” she says. “It’s never too late, sweetheart.”

  By the time Sis gets back to the reception, the sun is setting and Kitty B., Ray, and Cousin Willy are breaking everything down. They tell her to go on and find her dancing partner at the seawall. So she takes off her heels and scurries past the tents and the gathering of Giornelli men who are toasting and taking shots of ouzo beneath the live oak trees and over to Capers, who is sleeping on the seawall a few steps from his car, music spilling from his windows, a half empty bottle of champagne and two glasses beside him.

  “Capers,” she says, leaning in to him. There is a little pool of drool spilling out of his mouth, and when she nudges him all she can smell is her Uncle Bugby. He’s deep into his champagne-induced slumber, and Sis guesses she’ll have to load him up and get Cousin Willy to help her take him over to the rectory.

  Well, she doesn’t want to walk over to the gals and disappoint them with her perpetual lack of romantic activity, and she’s still in the mood to dance, so she just stands on the seawall by herself and sways back and forth to the Embers and the sound of Salvatore playing his trumpet in the oak trees behind her. As she dances, she watches Giuseppe and Little Hilda, who are touring the waterway on Kitty B.’s brother’s fifty-foot yacht. What an exit for them!

  They are dancing too, on the deck, stepping back and forth as the wind gusts blow Little Hilda’s lace veil up and around her. They have their whole lives ahead of them, Sis thinks. A trip to the Italian Riviera and a tour of Tuscany, where Giuseppe’s family is from, then back to a nice little condo in Alexandria, Virginia, that sits right by a subway stop that will carry them to Capitol Hill each day.

  As Sis sways, she thinks about the seeds the trees drop before a hurricane, and wonders why humans don’t have this kind of eminent drive. At least she never did. She should have gotten busier trying to pollinate before her doctor sent her to be carved out. It didn’t hit her until recently that she has no linkage. No next generation. No mark on the world. Nothing to outlive her.

  The gals say this is not true, that she has her music and her piano students, but she suspects she’s missed something. Everything else in her life trotted at the same pace with rest of the pack. She grew up, went through puberty, fell in love, got a degree, and a job—but it stopped right there, and she can’t help but think she’s been in a holding pattern ever since. That her midlife is just a shadow of her friends’ experiences. That her legacy is nothing more than a little winged fruit from a live oak tree that lands in the surf only to be swa
llowed up by the Atlantic Ocean that licks the shore incessantly with its forceful tongue.

  Now she watches the river rats furrowing in and out of the rocks along the seawall and she imagines the alligators and the herons and the snakes on the banks of the ACE Basin warming themselves in the last minutes of daylight.

  Before long, Ray and Kitty B. come over with a slice of cake and a bottle of champagne. They have worked themselves to the bone, and they finally got rid of Vangie, who is more of a nuisance than a help with her constant need for instructions and approval. Ray takes one look at Capers passed out on the seawall. “Well, take a look at Romeo!”

  Kitty B. giggles and Sis joins them as they take their place on the water’s edge, letting their feet dangle over the seawall. They talk about how beautiful it all was and how Senator Warren ought to have been impressed and how happy Giuseppe and Hilda looked and how thankful they were that Hilda made it through the event without breaking down and how Priscilla took a real liking to Giuseppe’s friend and how strange the money bag was and how Angus had to get Mason Kidd to open the bank on a Saturday afternoon so he could safely store the cash in the lockbox and how obvious it is that Capers Campbell likes Sis if he invited her to come out and dance on the seawall with him.

  As the horizon turns from a pale gray to a fiery pink, the gals laugh and toast and watch Little Hilda and Giuseppe’s yacht make its way beneath the bridge and around the bend as the herons and pelicans and terns flap their wings back to their damp and damaged homes to roost.

  TEN

  Hilda

  Hilda didn’t want to come out to the beach this weekend, what with all the memories of her and Angus on Edisto. But the gals just insisted that she come, and she owes them all such a debt of gratitude. Especially Ray, who practically put her daughter’s wedding together single-handedly and pushed on through the weekend, car wreck, wounds, and all. And Hilda knows how badly Ray wants to show off the work she’s done on the Montgomery beach house in the last year. Plus, it’s Ray’s birthday next week, and Cousin Willy is having a big barbeque to celebrate, and Hilda’s already sent her regrets since she’s avoiding Angus and Trudi. Maybe he’ll notice her missing and come to his senses.