The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  Ray studies Vangie, her painted lips and her perfectly fixed white hair.

  “Now, look, Ray, I want to ask your help with something.”

  “Oh,” Ray says. “What is it?”

  “I want you to help me coordinate the Healing Prayer Revival Day. It’s going to bless the socks off the community the way it did for me in Houston when I first attended one. It literally changed my whole outlook on life.” Vangie claps her hand gently. “Now you are one of the most influential people in town, First Lady, and I think that if you participate, others will follow suit.”

  What a piece of work. Bringing me a guilt-ridden birthday gift and then goading me into her wacky revival day. Well, Ray’s not going to be painted into this corner.

  As she opens her mouth to refuse the request, she hears a splash and a yelp and a thwomp.

  “Little Bit!” Vangie races to the edge of the deck where she sees that a good-sized alligator has her Jack Russell’s hindquarter between his jaws. As the gator starts to spin, Vangie runs out into the yard and down into the marsh where she sinks into the pluff mud.

  “No!” she cries. “No!”

  Cousin Willy comes running around from the driveway. He must have just gotten back from the airport. He bolts in the water and swims toward the gator as Little Bit makes one more yelp before the gator dunks him under. Justin runs out of the shed with a rope that he throws to Willy, who knots it and leaps toward the bubbles coming up from the center of the creek.

  A few yards away Ray spots the gator’s tail swishing fast on the way toward the other side of the bank. He’s gotten away with Little Bit in his jowls, and he doesn’t resurface until an hour later when his eyes pop up near the marsh on the opposite bank as Ray and Willy console Vangie Dreggs, who weeps hysterically on the edge of the creek, pulling at her helmet of hair and rocking her head back and forth in disbelief.

  “I’m so sorry,” Willy says as he pats her back with his wet hands.

  “We really are,” Ray hears herself say.

  Vangie turns to Ray and looks at her inquisitively; then she throws herself into Ray’s arms and hugs her tighter than she’s ever been hugged before, her large head resting in the crook of Ray’s neck as the new turquoise necklace from Carson digs into her collar bone. “I know y’all are, Ray,” she says. “I know y’all are.”

  THIRTEEN

  Hilda

  When Hilda peeks out the window by her sewing table, her throat tightens. Angus is parallel parking his car on the street just in front of the wrought iron gates. He hasn’t stepped foot in their home in over a year, and she doesn’t move a muscle as she watches him carefully unlatch the gate and stride toward the front door.

  She quickly drops her cigarette in her teacup and races to the hall mirror to inspect herself. She hasn’t put on a drop of makeup today, and she’s still in her nightgown and the long, brown silk house robe she put on this morning when she came downstairs to work on a new set of curtains for the breakfast room.

  She grabs a tube of old lipstick that she keeps in the antique desk in the foyer and quickly applies it before opening the door.

  “Good afternoon, Hilda,” Angus says. He’s still in his church suit—a gray houndstooth with a green and white striped bow tie. “Well, hello,” she says, stepping to the side to let him by. “Come on in, Doctor.”

  Her cheeks redden as she feels her heart pound intensely. For a moment she wonders if Angus can actually hear it; then she shakes her head and pulls the sash on her robe tight. She can’t believe how worked up she is, but she knows there is a part of her that has imagined, no—more than that—hoped, he would come walking back through the door of their home in an effort to make amends.

  Yes, she’s been chilly to him in public, but surely he knows the reason why. She was devastated when he left, and she desperately misses the life they shared. Even the most mundane details like the sound of his calm voice on the phone with his patients, the smell of his aftershave and the sight of those little bits of Kleenex he tears and puts on his face when he cuts his chin shaving. Most of all, she misses his kindness. He was always looking after her, bandaging her finger when she pricked it with a sewing pin and rubbing her temples gently when her migraines came on.

  “May I sit?” he says as they walk into the den that looks out over the back piazza and the salt marsh. The yard man cancelled on her last week, and the pittosporum bushes need a pruning something awful. Shaggy and thick, they cast a gray shadow over the white wrought iron bench in the garden.

  “Please.” She nods at him. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” he says, looking up at her. He motions toward the sofa and takes a seat on the far end. “We need to talk.”

  Hilda smoothes out her silk robe and takes a seat next to him. Her bony knees knock together beneath the shimmery fabric, and she squeezes them tight in an effort to still them.

  “Listen, Hilda,” Angus says. “I don’t know any other way to say this except to come right out with it.”

  She nods and tries to smile. She hopes her bare cheeks aren’t too shiny, and she wishes she had taken the time to fix her face this morning. Nonetheless, this is the moment she’s been waiting for, and she straightens her shoulders and lets her lips relax into a faint grin.

  He nods and looks around the den of his old home. He stops for a moment, and she watches his eyes settle on the portrait of Hilda and Little Hilda above the fireplace. In the painting Hilda sits on the white bench in the garden, and Little Hilda stands beside her, her arm resting on her mother’s shoulder. She gave the portrait to Angus for Christmas the year before Little Hilda graduated from high school. She can remember Little Hilda pulling off the sheet above the fireplace and Angus’s eyes brimming with tears.

  Now Angus looks back at her. “Trudi and I have set a date. We’re getting married.”

  Hilda clears her throat as a wave of heat rushes over her. It starts at the top of her head and works its way down into her neck. Her chest burns as if she has just leaned against the old radiator in the house by the paper mill. She thinks of that radiator from her childhood and how it rattled for two days when her father turned it on after the first freeze of the season. She swallows hard, and she can’t find any words.

  What a fool she is. What a fool to think this visit was about anything other than his final step away from her. She adjusts her posture, fans herself with her hands. “All right.” She nods emphatically. “Thank you for telling me.” Then she stands and motions toward the foyer. “Let me see you to the door.”

  He follows her lead as she escorts him to the foyer. She feels a drop of perspiration roll down her cheek, and she bites the bottom of her painted lips.

  “Hilda,” he says. “Trudi and are going to do this fast. We’ve been together for a while, you know.”

  “Yes,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You must be very ready.”

  She swings open the door, but he stops it midway and closes it gently back.

  “We’re getting married in a few weeks—Thanksgiving night, in fact. I want you to know so you won’t be shocked when you hear it from the gals.”

  “Aren’t you considerate, Angus,” she says. She bites her lip again and closes her eyes in an effort hold back her tears. She’s so hot she thinks she might faint.

  “There’s more,” he says. He reaches out and lightly touches her shoulder with his fingertips as if to steady her from a great distance. “Trudi and I have bought a little place on deep water on the north side of Edisto Island, so we won’t be living in town anymore. I’m going to retire in a few years, and I thought it was wise to go ahead and settle on a retirement spot.”

  One blow after another. Several years ago Hilda and Angus chose a plot of land on the south side of Edisto as a spot where they might one day retire. They bought it just before Little Hilda graduated from high school, and they even built a crab dock out over the marsh. The three of them would travel out there on a pretty Sunday afternoon and feast on
a picnic at the end of the dock. As Angus and Little Hilda set the crab traps and waited for supper, Hilda would flip through her Southern Living magazines and point to the house plans that might work for their spot. She even had the whole thing drawn up by an architect in Charleston—a white clapboard two-story wedge-style plantation house with double piazzas and a red tin roof.

  Angus received the lot in the settlement. Hilda got the house in town.

  She takes a deep breath and refuses to look Angus in the eye. She can’t believe he has no inkling of what she’s longed for these last two years and no desire to reconcile with her. She’s been holding out for him to come back around. She has prayed to the God she fears—begged Him in the black hours of the night. She knew she needed a miracle; it was the only way she could return to the life she loved, their life together. She could not help herself from clinging to the hope of it.

  Hilda shakes her head in disbelief. The pinprick of tears burns her eyes, but she wipes them away quickly with the heels of her hand.

  “Angus,” she says, removing his hand from her shoulder. “You’re an idiot to go through with this. To marry that tubby, tacky beauty shop manicurist. It’s ridiculous! It’s embarrassing! It’s—”

  “It’s right for me,” he says. His eyes narrow and he takes her by the elbow this time. She can feel his firm grasp beneath the thin sleeves of her gown, and she flinches before taking a step back.

  “Hilda, she’s a good woman.” She turns and walks toward the den. “She’s warm and loving, do you hear me? She’s not locked up in some strange world of pain or numbness or whatever it is. And if she ever got that way, I’ll bet my right arm she would do something about it.”

  “Get out of my house,” Hilda turns around to say. She walks briskly back to the front door and firmly shoves Angus out onto the piazza before slamming the door behind him. She can hear him pacing on the front stoop as she locks the knob and the dead bolt.

  “Hilda!” he shouts to the closed door. “There’s more I want to say to you.”

  Her head pounds now. A migraine coming on. She pulls at her hair as the pain creeps across the sides of her skull. The back of her nightgown is soaking wet, and she unfastens her robe as he continues, “This conversation is not over.”

  Then, as if by instinct, she runs to the dining room and grabs two of the four large square sterling candlesticks that one of the mill executives gave her as a wedding gift decades ago. They are solid and feel heavy in her hands, like dumbbells.

  She can hear him clearing his throat and tapping his fingers on the door, and she unlocks it, opens it fast and hurls one of the candlesticks as hard as she can at his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” he says, grabbing the top of his right arm. “That hurt!”

  Before he has a chance to step back, she throws the other one. It hits him right above his left eye, and a small gash forms just above his brow.

  “What the heck?” He pats his forehead and examines the blood on his hand as she runs back in the dining room and grabs the last two candlesticks.

  When he sees her coming, he turns and trots toward his car, holding his hand against his brow.

  Now Hilda runs into the front garden, her bare feet slapping the cool, mossy bricks of her walkway. She watches Angus slam his car door and examine his wound in the rearview mirror. He pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket and presses it against his right eye as Hilda swings open the wrought iron gate and steps directly in front of his car. She bangs on the hood of his sedan with the candlesticks, first the one in her right hand, then the one in the left.

  “Hilda!” he screams.

  A young family, the Maybanks, happen upon this scene on their walk home from church. Mr. Maybank quickly grabs both of his daughters by the elbow and herds them over to the opposite side of the street as his wife follows closely behind, her sling-back heels clapping against the road.

  Hilda continues to bang on the hood of Angus’s car with the square silver candlesticks. Her robe falls open and her long white nightgown is damp and clinging to her sides as she delivers one blow after another, leaving deep dents across the smooth, blue surface of his Lincoln sedan.

  Angus honks his horn as if to send a warning, then reverses quickly, holding the bloodied handkerchief over his eye. He turns the car around as she lurches forward and makes like she might chase him down the road in her bare feet.

  She tries not to look across the street, where the Maybank girls in their pale blue smocked dresses can’t help but stop and stare at the drama unfolding on the corner of Third and Rantowles. In fact, two other cars have stopped and pulled over to the opposite side of the road as if this were a show. The most privileged gal in Jasper coming apart at the seams.

  She can feel them all watching her as she drops the candlesticks in the street, ties her robe tight and walks back through the wrought iron gate and beneath the Lady Banksia rose vines, her chest rising and falling quickly in an effort to catch her breath.

  When she gets in the house, she locks and bolts the door, then looks at her sweaty, haggard reflection in the gold gilded mirror in the foyer.

  Someone knocks on her door. A male voice says, “Mrs. Prescott? Mrs. Prescott, you all right in there?”

  She turns and heads up the stairs as the man continues to knock, and the chatter of the onlookers rises and swells on the street in front of her gate. She locks herself in her bedroom and falls into her unmade bed.

  It is true. She stares at the crack in the ceiling above her bed. I will die alone. I will waste away in this house by myself. Then she turns and pounds the pillows in the place next to her, before kicking them off her bed.

  FOURTEEN

  Ray

  Ray checks her watch. She’s in an after-church meeting about the Healing Prayer Revival Day that Vangie organized, but she would prefer to be having her teeth filed.

  She just couldn’t say no to Vangie this time, what with a gator on her property devouring Vangie’s dog right before her very eyes. It will just be a few months of this nonsense, and then the revival day will be over and done, and perhaps by that point Vangie will have set her sights on another Lowcountry town to sell off or evangelize. “Now, here’s a sample schedule of how we held this day at my old church in Houston,” Vangie says as she licks her finger and passes out the stacks of papers to the vestry members.

  “First we started with teaching and preaching, then moved to the laying on of hands for those who wanted prayer, and we concluded with the Generational Healing Eucharist.”

  “The laying on of hands?” Gus Dowdy, the town pharmacist, asks. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well,” says Vangie, blinking her big, round eyelids and clapping her hands together once. “That’s where we invite folks to come forward for prayer and two or three of us will gather around them, put our hands on them, and pray for whatever their need might be.”

  Gus nods his head. “They don’t start acting funny, do they? Like the folks on TV?”

  “Well,” says Capers, “I’ve been to a few of these kinds of things before and the Holy Spirit can manifest itself in a number of ways. It is possible that someone might weep or feel a burning sensation or even rest in the Spirit.”

  Ray rolls her eyes. She can’t understand why Capers would support such outlandish notions. He’s from a nice Charleston family, but somewhere along the way she thinks a screw came loose. Rumor has it he was swept up in this whole church renewal movement, and now he talks about the Holy Spirit all the time. Sometimes he even claps his hands, closes his eyes, and sways to the hymns in church. And just last Sunday she saw him lifting his hands up to the sky during the “Doxology.” It’s doggone irreverent. What would Queen Elizabeth I think of all of this?

  “Yes!” Vangie reaches across the table to squeeze Capers’s hand. “It’s true about the resting. That’s why I’m going to bring some of my smaller Oriental rugs to put around the front of the church. We don’t want anyone to fall down on a hard surface.”
/>
  “Oh my,” says the elderly Mrs. Henrietta Graydon. “I’ve never seen a thing like that in the Episcopal church.”

  “Me neither,” says Gus. “Sounds kind of Pentecostal to me. You aren’t going to have any snakes around, are you?”

  Ray can’t help but laugh. She loves watching these older folks set Capers and Vangie straight.

  Just as Capers opens his Bible to defend the practice of the laying on of hands, Justin comes riding up to the window on his bicycle.

  “Aunt Ray,” he says, as he cups his hands around his eyes and peers inside. “Come on out. Mrs. Prescott’s in trouble.”

  “Excuse me, y’all,” Ray says, and she hurries outside of the parish hall where she meets Justin in the parking lot.

  “What happened, son?”

  “It’s Mrs. Prescott, Aunt Ray. Henry Hamrick says she flipped her lid. She was banging on the Doc’s car with some kind of ginormous candlesticks.”

  “Oh, no.” Ray covers her mouth.

  “And there was blood too,” Justin says. “Drops of it all across the sidewalk.”

  Ray runs into the sanctuary where Sis is reorganizing the music for the choir. She calls up to the balcony, “Something’s happened to Hilda! Come on!”

  Sis runs down in her choir robe, and they dash next door to the parish hall kitchen where Kitty B. is packaging up a leftover tray of ladyfingers from the after-church coffee hour. She drops her tray in the sink and follows them.

  “I wonder what in the world happened,” Kitty B. says as they race down Church Street toward Third.

  “Well, we won’t know until we ask,” Ray says. “Let’s get on over there and talk to her.”

  When they get to Hilda’s house there is a handful of onlookers, mostly teenagers, milling about the sidewalk.