The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  I don’t blame you, Hilda. She peers into the peephole. Right now I wish I could hide out in there too.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sis

  Two days ago the Reverend Capers Campbell walked right over to Sis while she was practicing on Ina and said, “May I take you to dinner on Saturday?”

  “Why yes,” she said, surprised. She could feel her cheeks turn pink, and he smiled and said, “I’ll try to get a reservation at Suzanne’s.”

  “Great!”

  I’m nervous, Sis writes to Hilda this afternoon when she picks up her casserole dish and drops off a few blueberry muffins and a carton of milk. I have a date with Capers tonight.

  Just as she walks back to her car, she hears the faintest footfalls behind the door, and she wonders if Hilda came down the stairs to get her note. She waits for a while for the door to open, but it doesn’t. Sis imagines Hilda just beyond the door, reading her note. She walks back onto the piazza and says. “I’ll let you know how it goes, Hilda. I’ll write you as soon as I get back.” Then she turns and heads toward the gate, checking back every few seconds to see if the door opens.

  An hour later Ray and Kitty B. meet at Sis’s house to go over the guest list for Katie Rae’s wedding for the umpteenth time, but in truth Sis knows they’re here to give her advice and help her pick out an outfit. “So did he really ask you out in the sanctuary?” Kitty B. asks.

  “Hush, Kitty B.,” Ray squints her eyes as if the sun is in them. “Don’t highlight that part.”

  “Why not?” Sis looks up from over her new stylish black bifocals and winks.

  “Yeah,” Kitty B. says, reaching for one of the miniature pecan tarts she’s brought for a wedding taste test. “That’s my favorite part. It makes it all seem forbidden or something.” She bites down on the tart, and it takes her several chews to get her teeth loose. Then she points to the list and says, “Now what am I going to do, y’all? The Benningtons have added forty-five additional people to the groom’s list.”

  “What?” Ray says. “They are already way over their limit with the one hundred and fifteen names they submitted last week! I’m sorry, but they’re just out of control. Katie Rae needs to instruct Marshall to call them down on this.”

  “I know.” Kitty B. uncovers another tray of potential sweets: mint-covered pecans, lemon squares, and chocolate-dipped macaroons. “It’s just that he feels obligated to include certain members of his congregation.”

  “If you ask me”—Ray straightens her shoulders—“I think the Benningtons are taking advantage of the situation. They must think just because y’all live on the water and own a few antiques that this will be no skin off your back.”

  “Well.” Kitty B. wipes the powdered sugar from her fingertips on the sides of her Lowcountry Manna apron. “LeMar told me he thinks we should just let it go.”

  “Really?” Sis cocks her head and raises her eyebrows. “LeMar’s not concerned?”

  “He’s not this week,” Kitty B. says. “In fact, ever since Vangie sent her painters and the landscape folk over to the house to fix things up, he’s gotten a new spring in his step. He’s gone out to his old baby bud rosebush and started pruning it, and he’s even been meeting with a composer at the College of Charleston who is writing an original piece for him to sing at the wedding.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Sis bobs her chin up and down. “Maybe this is just what he needed to jumpstart himself.”

  “I sure hope so, Sis,” Kitty B. says, folding over the new additions to the groom’s list. “Either that or he’s become a full-blown schizophrenic.”

  The gals chuckle and Kitty B. declares, “Let’s forget about the guest list for now. I’d rather focus on Sis and getting her ready for her date.”

  “Gals.” Sis can’t help but shake her head at them. “Y’all act like we’re still in high school.”

  “Don’t be critical.” Ray pulls up the Saks shopping bag at her feet. “Let’s have some fun and pick out what you’re going to wear.”

  “You practically look like you could be in high school, Sis,” Kitty B. says. “It’s true. Isn’t it, Ray?”

  Ray nods and Kitty B. continues, “You look like you’re in your early thirties at the most, Sis. I don’t see how you do it.”

  Sis waves them off. “Hush.” But they pull her up from the chair and walk her into the closet, where they sort through her options.

  “I do wish Hilda were here,” Ray says. “She’s the one who really knows how to put things together, but I brought this in case you might want to try it.” Ray pulls out the turquoise necklace that Carson bought her for her birthday. Sis feels the weight of it in her hand and says, “I’m afraid I’ll look like a crooked-neck egret in this. I don’t think I have the strength to hold my head up with it on.”

  Ray nods. “I’m not sure I like it either, but my daughter-in-law said it was very stylish.”

  “Of course, anything I have would look like a tent on you.” Kitty B. points to her wide hips. “And everything I own is at least twenty years old. But I did pull out this red blouse from Katie Rae’s drawer. I thought the color would look great on you.”

  “Y’all are sweet,” Sis says. She knows they can’t help but get excited about a romantic prospect. It’s just the way they are. “But I think I’d better wear something I’m comfortable in.” She tries on a few of her outfits and finally, they settle on a brown silk blouse Sis bought from Ann Taylor last year with a little lace around the trim and a pair of camel-colored wool pants and some dark suede flats with little square buckles on top.

  “Are you going over to Sylvia’s?” Ray whispers after they approve Sis’s choice.

  “No need to whisper,” Kitty B. says. “Hilda is way out of earshot now.”

  “No, I’m not going to get my hair done.” Sis looks at the clock ticking above her stove. “And it’s not because I’m boycotting Sylvia.” She looks in the mirror and back to Ray, “I think my hair looks fine the way it is. I’m just going to give it a little washing and go.”

  “That’s a fine idea.” Kitty B. turns to Ray. “Part of Sis’s charm is how natural she appears. Now let’s get out of here and give her some time to get ready.”

  “Table for two at Suzanne’s,” Capers says with a side-angled grin as he closes Sis into the car of his Mercury sedan.

  Suzanne’s is a wonderful little restaurant on the marsh between Jasper and Cottage Island. The chef used to be a sailor and his ship, Suzanne, broke down off the coast. He decided to cast his anchor in the Ashepoo River while he attended Johnson and Wales’s cooking school where he learned how to create the most scrumptious “season-inspired” lowcountry cuisine. The restaurant was featured in Southern Living a few years ago, and since then folks from Savannah and Charleston drive the full hour to dine there. It’s difficult to get a reservation without a few weeks’ notice.

  “How’d you manage that?” Sis cups her hands together, but he has already closed the door and he can’t hear her as he makes his way around the front of the car to the driver’s side.

  Funny how when you are on a date for the first time in a long time, your senses are as heightened like when you were a child. The car smells like air freshener and mint and something a little musty too. Sis tries to place it as Capers pulls out of the parking lot and onto Main Street. She can feel the tug of the engine switching gears as they head out of town and toward the island.

  When they arrive, Sis and Capers learn that it will be a thirty-minute wait until their table is ready, so they get two glasses of the house red wine and sit out on the dock behind the restaurant where Capers spots two osprey and one bald eagle making its way toward its roost. When he points at the eagle he lets his right arm fall down across Sis’s shoulder, but his arm feels stiff. He doesn’t pull her close, so she won’t let herself soften and lean in. They sit in this awkward, uptight position for at least ten minutes until the host calls to them from the porch with two menus in his hand.

  Though the sun hasn
’t completely set, it is very dark inside the restaurant. The walls are made of a deep brown wood, and the tables are draped in a burgundy cloth. The only light is the green legal lamp above the host’s station and the small candles burning in a miniature fishbowl on each table.

  “So, Sis,” Capers says after he orders an appetizer of smoked wahoo and beer-battered fried shrimp with a Tabasco dipping sauce. He stops to straighten out the bread basket and the salt and pepper shaker, and then he leans in toward her. The candlelight dances on his chin, and Sis worries that he might suddenly feel the heat of it.

  “I’m sorry about finking out on you at the Prescott wedding a few months back.” He looks down at the fishbowl and becomes mesmerized by the candlelight for a moment.

  Sis smiles and feels herself blush, but it’s too dark in the restaurant for him to notice. “That’s all right,” she says. “That champagne can sneak up on you.”

  “Really,” he says. “I don’t take a drink too often, and when I do it goes straight to my head.”

  “I understand.” She leans over and pats his hand.

  “Well, I’ve been here at All Saints for a little over a year now,” he says, “and I’m finally starting to get my bearings and understand the church community.”

  “It’s a nice fit.” She gives a reassuring nod. “You seem to really know who you’re preaching to. And I think you challenge people in a good way.”

  “It’s a good place.” He shrugs his shoulders and says, “With Ray Montgomery as the senior warden, I have the sense that I don’t have to worry with any of the logistical details.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Sis says. “She’s got you covered. She could run All Saints with her eyes closed.”

  “Yeah,” he nods. “And then there’s Vangie with all her big ideas. I know she rubs folks a little the wrong way, but I think her heart is in the right place.”

  “Oh, me too.” Sis smoothes out a wrinkle in the center of the tablecloth. “She’ll learn to tone it down.”

  “Anyhow, all that help frees me up to focus on the ministry,” he says. “And the preaching.”

  “Good,” she says as his soft, green eyes search hers.

  “You know what else I’m thankful for?” He leans in again so that she’s sure the flame is going to burn his skin.

  “Tell me.” She nudges the fishbowl with the candle to the side.

  “How you make that organ come to life.” He leans back and rubs his chin, and she feels her cheeks redden again.

  Then the appetizer arrives, and the waiter fills up their wine glasses. After they sample the shrimp and wahoo, Sis says, “Well, I’m guessing you know my story.”

  “Yes, I do.” He reaches out and pats her hand quickly and somewhat mechanically. “I’m so sorry about your loss.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she says. “Over thirty years. Ancient history, I suppose.”

  “Loss is loss,” he says. “I’ve been in this line of work long enough to know that time doesn’t heal all wounds. In fact, it often makes them worse.”

  “It was awful.” Sis looks up at him. The light catches the edges of his straight, square teeth as he winces with concern.

  “I sure loved Fitz, but I think it was kind of a young love, and I don’t know what it would have been like over time. I’m sure I romanticize it in my mind. Anyway, I always thought I would find someone else.”

  “And?”

  “Well, much to my surprise and disappointment, it just never seemed to happen.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sis takes a gulp of her wine and waves his sympathy away. “Enough about my old story. I’m sure everyone and their brother has told you about me. What about your story? Why didn’t you ever marry?”

  “I’ve never been real good at that kind of relationship,” he says, drumming his thumbs on the side of the table. “I blame that mostly on my home life when I was a child.”

  “Yeah, that’ll do it to you,” she says. “I think that’s what did it to Hilda, but I’ll never know for sure.”

  “I’ve tried to call on Hilda, but I can’t seem to get a response.” Capers scratches his ear.

  “No one can,” Sis says. “You know she didn’t leave her house for twenty months when Angus first left, and now that he’s getting married, I’m not sure she’ll ever come out again.”

  “Please tell me what I can do for her,” he says.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Sis says. “But I’ll tell you if something comes to mind.”

  Then Sis reaches over and squeezes Capers’s elbow. She wants to know more about his past, so she pushes. “Weren’t you ever in love?”

  “I did manage to have a girlfriend, once.” He scrapes the crumbs off the table with his other hand. “It was that time when college was about to end and the girls were on the hunt to find a mate. I stumbled into this lovely girl from Savannah. Was engaged to her,” he says. “Jane Anne Blakely, my late-college sweetheart. We’d made plans for me to attend MBA school at UNC so I could get enough education to help run her father’s shipping business.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got the call to ministry,” he says, as he wipes his damp brow with the dark napkin.

  “How did it come?” A kind of obsessive curiosity comes over Sis that she can’t quite conceal. She’s been going to church all her life, but she’s never tired of stories about how one receives a call to ministry. It’s such a mysterious and thrilling thing to have happen. To have God single you out and set your life aside for full-time service.

  “I was helping with the youth group at the church I attended in college. I was taking them up to the mountains on a retreat weekend. It was a literal mountaintop experience at the Kanuga Retreat Center. I was looking at the cross at the foot of the lake early one morning, and the mist was rising up from the water in such a way that I just knew what I had to do.”

  “Wow,” Sis says as the waiter delivers their entrées. The scallops and grits with a mousseline sauce for her, and the roasted quail with a Madeira gravy for Capers. “I love those stories.”

  Capers bows his head and says a short but lovely prayer and then nods warmly in her direction.

  “So I’m guessing your college sweetheart wasn’t too keen on the idea?”

  He takes a bite of quail, relishes it for a moment, then says, “I prayed and prayed she’d go along with it, and she seemed to at first. She always seemed intrigued by the fact that I went to church and helped out with the youth group, but eventually she pulled away.” “Oh,” Sis says, narrowing her eyes. “That’s awful.”

  “I mean, I certainly think her father influenced her. And then the bishop selected Nashotah House for my seminary.”

  “That one up in Nebraska?”

  “Wisconsin,” he says shaking his head. “I think it was the idea of three years in that part of the country that really put her over the edge. She hated cold weather. Anyhow, one Sunday morning when I was walking home from church, she pulled up beside me in her little Chevrolet convertible, handed me the ring back, and that was that.”

  “I’m so sorry, Capers.” Sis can’t help but shake her head with sympathy.

  He takes another generous sip of wine and looks down at his plate. “I’m not, Sis. I’m right where I’m supposed to be, and in the end I think the good Lord was protecting me from a relationship that would have always been pulling me away from what I was called to do.”

  When they get back in the car, Capers puts on an old Catalinas CD and says, “Wanna try shagging at the seawall again?”

  “Okay,” she says. He reaches his arm across the seat and puts his hand on top of hers. It feels slightly cool and damp and for some reason her hand wants to wriggle out from under it.

  When they pull up to the seawall, Capers turns up his CD player too loud, and it cracks for a moment and then has a kind of fuzzy sound for the rest of the evening. He puts his hand on her back and then takes it away again. She can’t help but think of Fitz and the way he s
et his hand firmly on the small of her back with such certainty.

  Is this what time does to men? Makes them uncertain? She tries to picture her life with Fitz as it might have been. Would he still have his hand firmly above her hips? Would she still be fending him off in the car as he became frisky?

  She usually tries to stop herself from this fantasy. It’s like reopening a scar and seeing that there are places beneath the top layers that still haven’t sealed over. They would have been married for thirty-four years by now. Her guess is that they would have had more children than anyone. “I want four at least,” Fitz said once when he’d come over to help Sis babysit the McMillan clan. He would wrestle Dan and Betty down to the ground and tickle them until they begged for mercy. “Me too,” she said as she held the baby, Lucy, on her lap. Sis was an only child, and she didn’t want to wish that loneliness on anyone.

  She recalls all of this as Capers takes her hand and leads her hesitantly in the right-two-three, left-two-three, rock-back while they shag along the seawall. Despite the step-togethers and the spins and the wrist turns, he seems as distant and perfunctory as the buoy that bobs beyond water’s edge, marking the path to the Intracoastal Waterway. Mmm. Why can’t I warm to him?

  When Capers walks Sis to her door, she notices for the first time in months the dead bugs that have piled up in the plastic cover of her porch light. There is an abandoned spiderweb on the top outer corner of the door with decaying pockets of eggs that are wound tight in its center. She turns and smiles at him in the dull light of the doorway as a moth thumps his wings against the porch light and crickets call to one another in the marsh across the street.

  Capers takes a deep breath as though he is psyching himself up for a bungee jump and leans down and gives Sis a quick peck on the cheek. He stands upright, touches her shoulders, and smiles. “I’ll see you in the church house tomorrow.”