The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  “We need to talk,” she says. “Let’s go to your apartment.”

  “Okay,” Priscilla says. “I have so much to show you. Some pictures from the wedding. Oh, and look at this.”

  She holds out her hand and points to a thin silver band on her slender finger. It looks like it could have come out of a bubble gum machine at K-Mart.

  “This is my ring for now,” Priscilla says. “We’re going to pick one out together as soon as J.K. signs his new contract with Knucklehead.”

  Ray cringes. She pictures the antique set platinum ring that she picked out with Donovan. It had a beautiful diamond in the center and two sapphires on the side.

  She wonders what in the world Donovan thinks now, and she hopes it’s not too late for Pris to patch things up with him.

  Priscilla’s apartment is a wreck. There are dirty plates in the sink and a half-empty bottle of champagne on the coffee table. Pictures from Las Vegas are strewn across the sofa. Ray lets her eyes pass over them. She sees J.K. and Priscilla in blue jeans and T-shirts facing each other between some metal arch wrapped in faux vines. Behind them is an overweight man in a royal blue suit with an eerie grin on his face. How could Priscilla go through with it?

  “Want something to drink, Mama?” Priscilla asks, grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she continues, unable to wait for her mother’s reply. “You haven’t been in my apartment for at least a year now, have you? J.K.’s going to move in this weekend. My rent is better than his so we’ll stay here until my lease is up, and then we’ll find a new place.”

  Priscilla pulls her dreadlocks back and ties them in a rubber band she finds on the coffee table. “Did you say you wanted something to drink?”

  “No, thank you, darling,” Ray says. She scoots the pictures over and pats a place next to her for Priscilla to sit.

  “What is it?” Priscilla says. “Is Hilda’s mom okay?”

  “No, she’s not okay, but that’s not why I’m here.” Ray looks her daughter head on. “It’s about you.”

  Priscilla squints her eyes as if she’s confused. “Oh, do you want to have a party back home? I was hoping you would. I want everyone to meet J.K.”

  Ray taps her foot firmly on the hardwood floor. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you are happy with your rash decision to marry J.K.”

  Priscilla pulls back from her mother and adjusts her posture. “Yes, Mama. I do expect you to believe it.”

  “Pris, you were just about to become engaged to a bright and wonderful young man. What happened?”

  “Donovan is great, but he’s not for me, Mama,” she says as she pinches her eyebrow. “You know, I’ve had this thing for J.K. for years now, and when he chased me down in Grand Central Station last week just as I was about to board my train to visit Donovan, I just couldn’t get the thought of him out of my mind. And then when Donovan proposed, all I wanted to do was jump off that boat and take the next train back to New York to see J.K. So that’s what I did.”

  “I don’t see how you could know such a thing.” Ray points to the pictures, which are falling into the cracks of the sofa. “Maybe that one little moment in the train station was like some scene in a romantic movie, but I can’t imagine you really believe that you are meant to spend the rest of your life with Poop—um, I mean, J.K.”

  Priscilla’s eyes widen and she starts to heave as she takes in one deep breath after another.

  Ray sucks her teeth. “Let me ask you something, Pris. Were you under the influence when you married him?”

  “What?” Priscilla says.

  Ray picks up the picture of the two in front of the arch and holds it up for Priscilla to see.

  “Sure, we had a little champagne in the plane on the way to Las Vegas,” Priscilla says, snatching the picture out of her mother’s hand. “But when I accepted J.K.’s proposal that night, I was stone-cold sober and so was he.”

  Ray looks out of the window for a moment. Across the street she sees an open window of another apartment where an older man puffs on a cigar as the nightly news flashes across his television screen.

  Ray turns back to Priscilla. “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” she says. “We’ve got to get this annulled. The champagne on the plane will be enough to do it.”

  “What are you talking about, Mama?” Pris says. “I don’t want to get it annulled.”

  “Priscilla, don’t be an idiot.” Ray bites the inside of her cheek. “J.K. is worthless. He’s a child who makes his living hurting himself so that other people can laugh at him. Do you think he’ll ever grow up?”

  Ray snatches another picture of J.K. doing a headstand in some casino lobby and shows it to Priscilla. “This man will never mature, much less provide for you.”

  Priscilla stands up and grabs her head with both hands. “That’s not true!” she says. “He’s a very loving person, Mama. I’ve got a nice paying job on a new show and so does he. We’re going to be fine. I knew you would take this hard, but I never thought you would suggest I break the whole thing off.” Priscilla inhales deeply and adds, “As if it never happened.”

  “I insist that you break it off.” Ray stands and takes her daughter by the shoulders. “I’ve got to save you from yourself, Priscilla. You’ll thank me ten years from now. Trust me.”

  Priscilla begins to weep. She makes these terrible little choking sounds that remind Ray of a small child gasping for air.

  “You can’t make me, Mama!” she shouts. “You can’t make me marry Donovan or move back to South Carolina or join the Wedding Guild of All Saints or who knows what else you have in mind for my life.” She pulls Ray’s hands off her, steps back, and says, “Now if you can’t accept my decision I want you to leave.”

  “Leave?” Ray says.

  Priscilla walks to the door and opens it. “Yes, Mama.” Her eyes brim with tears, and she rubs them with her forearm before nodding in the direction of the hallway.

  Ray’s belly tightens with fury. She’s going to talk some sense into her child yet. This is not over. Just as she walks over to slam the door back, a tall, wiry figure comes bounding up the stairs with a bouquet of sunflowers.

  “Mrs. Montgomery?” J.K. says. “What are you doing here?”

  He runs over to embrace Ray, but he stops short when he sees Priscilla’s red and tear-streaked face.

  “Everybody okay?” he asks. He gives Priscilla a kiss on the cheek and hands her the flowers. “For you, my bride.”

  “Thank you,” she says, but she doesn’t take her eyes off Ray.

  J.K. rubs his jeans with the palms of his hands and says to Priscilla, “Should I walk around the block and give you some time?”

  “No,” Priscilla says, glancing at him. “Mama is welcome to stay, as long as she accepts our marriage.”

  Ray watches J.K. look back and forth between them. Then he suffles his feet from side to side.

  Priscilla raises her eyebrows and says, “It’s that simple, Mama. Accept it or leave.”

  Ray can feel the cramps from the fibroid tumors coming on, and she wants to double over. Nothing about this afternoon has turned out the way she planned. She watches Priscilla grab J.K.’s hand and squeeze it tight, and she knows she has no choice.

  “You’ll regret this, Priscilla,” she says as she walks out the door. “You will for the rest of your days.”

  Ray weeps all the way to the airport in the cab. The driver reminds her of the gruff cashier in the corner store, and when he offers her some yellowed tissue from a Ziploc bag in his glove compartment, she refuses it. She calls Willy just before she boards the plane. “It went awful.”

  He sighs. “I’m sorry, Ray, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I think we’re going to have to come to terms with this one whether we like it or not.” No, Ray thinks. She’s had to come to terms with more than her fair share in this lifetime. She shouldn’t have to come to terms with her daughter’s foolish mistake.

  Just as she is about to hang up he says
, “Vangie called to remind you about the revival on Saturday.”

  “Great,” Ray says. “What a way to end the week.”

  Willy picks her up at the airport and drives her the forty miles home to Jasper. They both collapse in the bed, but Ray can’t sleep. Her tumors are flaring up again, and all she sees when she closes her eyes is Priscilla standing there in that doorway as rigid as a steel rod, forcing her to accept her dreadful decision to marry J.K.

  Once Willy starts to snore, Ray tiptoes out of bed and goes downstairs to have a glass of wine and a pimento cheese sandwich. Nothing, nothing has turned out the way she planned, and she can’t understand why.

  She takes a bite of her sandwich and glances over at the schedule on the refrigerator and realizes it was her turn to check in on Hilda tonight.

  Shoot. For all I know she could be starving in there.

  She grabs a few odds and ends out of the refrigerator and throws on her raincoat and walks down the street to deliver the food.

  It must be one in the morning by now, but she can see that a lamp is still lit upstairs in Hilda’s bedroom. She knocks on the door and calls up to her. “Hilda,” she says, “I brought you a few odds and ends. Some pimento cheese and honey ham and pickled okra. Sorry it’s so late.”

  When no one responds she sits down on the stoop. There is a pen on the bench by the front door, and Ray grabs it and tears off a piece of the paper grocery bag she brought over and begins to write.

  Hilda,

  This might bring a smile to your face—I’m fit to be tied. Priscilla married Poop 2 in Las Vegas, and I just flew up to New York to see if I could get her to break it off. In fine Priscilla form, she refused.

  Then there’s Vangie taking over the church with her kooky evangelical agenda, and did you know that some developer from Savannah is going to turn the charming Allston house across the street from me into an apartment building?

  Oh, and I threw an out-and-out hissy fit at Katie Rae’s wedding, and I’m not even sure if Kitty B. and Sis are talking to me any more. I wouldn’t blame them if they aren’t. It was practically unforgivable.

  Anyway, they both seemed to have changed since you closed yourself in there.

  Kitty B.’s signed up for dog training school, of all things, and she drives to Charleston twice a week with one of her mangy dogs for her lessons.

  Sis lost it one day and donated her wedding dress to Goodwill after I didn’t accept her offer to let Priscilla wear it. Of course, I bought the dress back from Goodwill. I couldn’t stand the thought of some stranger getting married in it.

  Oh, and my hair seems to be falling out in clumps in the back.Isn’t that lovely? And despite the hormone replacement therapy that I’m back on, I still have those awful fibroid tumors, and I’m sure I’ll have to have a hysterectomy after all.

  I had no control over the first half of my life, Hilda. I know you’ve figured that much out. But I was hoping things would turn out differently for the second half. I was wrong.

  Love,

  Ray

  Ray slips the note through the door.

  “I’m going now,” she says. “I’ll bring you a better meal to eat tomorrow if I survive the healing prayer revival.”

  Then she walks beneath the Lady Banksia vines, through the wrought iron gates, up the sidewalk, and home.

  The honour of your presence

  is requested at the marriage of

  Miss Elizabeth Phillips Mims

  to

  Mr. Salvatore Anatole Giornelli

  On Saturday, the twenty-first of April

  Two thousand and seven

  at six o’clock

  12 Third Street

  Jasper, South Carolina

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Sis

  Sis knocks on Ray’s front door. She and Kitty B. have been summoned over for tea. Ray’s been acting strange for months now, and Sis is anxious to hear what she has to say.

  She wants to give her plenty of time before she tells them her big news so she twists her engagement ring around so that the diamond faces down and she blots her lips on a napkin as the wide mahogany door opens.

  “Hello, Sis,” Ray says. “Come on in.”

  Kitty B. wobbles over and gives Sis an embrace. “We want to hear all about your trip to Italy. Did you get those sandals there?”

  “Yes,” Sis beams. “At a little leather market in Lucca.” She bounces on the balls of her feet and tries hard not to break into a full-fledged grin.

  On Ray’s side table in the foyer is a stack of brochures for the “Healing Prayer Revival Day.”

  “So did you patch things up with Capers and Vangie?” Sis asked.

  Ray blushes. “Well, yes. You know, no one showed up at that revival day back in January, so I’m helping them coordinate a new one in a few weeks, and I’ve been handing out fliers left and right. I’m sure they’re going to call on you to help with the music now that you’re back.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Sis says. “I’ll call Vangie tomorrow.”

  “Well, come on out on the piazza.” Ray points toward the glass doors at the end of her living room. “I’ve got the tea all set up.”

  As they take their places around the wicker coffee table, Ray serves them a cup of Earl Grey and some scones and crumpets that she bought from a new bakery in Charleston. In the little silver bowls she inherited from Willy’s mother she has fresh raspberries, whipped cream, and lemon curd.

  “Ray, this is so nice,” Kitty B. says. “You went all out. What’s the occasion?”

  “Well, go on and serve yourself a cup of tea and I’ll tell you.” She hands Sis the cream and sugar on a little china tray and nods.

  “Are you jet-lagged, Sis?”

  “Not really,” Sis says. “But I need you all to catch me up on everything. Has anyone heard from Hilda?”

  Kitty B. shakes her head and spoons a dollop of whipped cream across her scone.

  “We wish,” Ray says as she takes her seat and carefully spreads out the linen napkin across her lap. “But there’s no news on that front.”

  “How about Priscilla?” Sis says. “Any news there?”

  Ray looks down at her teacup. “No. I kept thinking she would come to her senses, but it looks like I’ve got to let it go. That’s what Willy keeps telling me, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sis reaches her hand out and pats Ray’s elbow.

  “Well, enough about that.” Ray flaps her hand as if to shoo away a wasp. “I think I better tell y’all what I have on my chest. If I don’t, we won’t be able to enjoy our tea.”

  “Go ahead,” Kitty B. says as she takes a bite of her scone.

  Ray’s eyes fill with tears and she looks down into her lap. “Oh, y’all, I’m so sorry about how I behaved at Katie Rae’s wedding. Will you ever forgive me?”

  Kitty B. and Sis look at each other and laugh.

  “Is that what this is about?” Sis says. “You think you need to apologize for that?”

  Kitty B. laughs so hard that she sneezes. Then she blows her nose into her napkin and says, “Ray, honestly, I think we were all glad to see you’re human.”

  Ray looks up and Sis nods strongly in agreement. She reaches out her hand again. “That was a tough night for you. Probably one of the toughest. You had every right to throw a hissy fit. We would never hold that against you.”

  “You wouldn’t?” Ray looks back and forth at both of the gals as they shake their heads.

  “Never,” Kitty B. says.

  “Y’all are dear friends,” Ray says. “I thought you were upset with me about that. I’ve been worrying over it for the past two months.”

  They all laugh together and Ray takes a sip of her tea. Then she fans herself. “Hot tea in March. What was I thinking? I can already feel a hot flash coming on.”

  Kitty B. smiles, takes a sip of her tea, and clears her throat. Then a serious look comes over her face. “I will give you both something to worry about.”

  “What?
” Ray says, as Sis watches three worry lines spread across Kitty B.’s forehead.

  Kitty B. pats her eyes with the edge of the napkin. “Y’all, we got some of LeMar’s medical tests back yesterday.”

  Sis can tell by the tone of her voice that something is not right. “New tests? I didn’t know anything else was wrong.”

  Kitty B. swallows hard. “Sis, you missed this, but a few weeks ago LeMar fainted while he was pruning his sweetheart rosebush, and Angus helped me drive him over to MUSC for an MRI. The doctors saw a small mass at the very tip of his brain stem.”

  “Oh no,” Sis covers her mouth with her hand.

  “Well, we just found out that it is a malignant tumor.”

  Ray gasps. “It can’t be.”

  “Not only that, but it’s inoperable,” Kitty B. says as she wrings her hands. “Poor fellow. He really had been feeling bad—at least this last year or so—and the doctors had missed it.” She rubs the back of her head. “It was tucked in good back there, and I am just as sick as I can be about it.”

  “Well, I just don’t understand,” Ray says. “I knew he’d had the fall, but I didn’t know about the MRI. I thought he’d been feeling better than ever—”

  “He has been,” Kitty B. says. “He’s been up and moving for the first time in a decade. The last couple of months have been the best he’s had in years.”

  Sis jumps up and goes over to embrace Kitty B.

  “He says he’s going to fight it,” Kitty B. says, her chin on Sis’s shoulder. “But the doctors at the Hollings Cancer Center are afraid it started in another source, and they want to run more tests this week to see if that’s true.”

  They sit this way for several moments, Sis’s arms around Kitty B. and Ray staring in disbelief into her tea.

  “We’re here for you,” Sis says.

  “That’s right.” Ray nods. “Whatever you need, we’ll take care of it.”

  “I know y’all will,” Kitty B. says. “Right now I just want to relax with you both and enjoy this tea and scones.” So they sit back and pass the teapot and smell the confederate jasmine in between their bits of conversation.