Gracie told herself that she should not be surprised at her mother’s attitude. She and her mother had been at odds for all of Gracie’s life. Gracie could still recall being six years old and wanting to wear a certain pair of pants that her mother did not want her to wear.
“You won that fight, Mother, and you have won just about all of them since—but you are not going to win this one,” she said aloud to herself in the mirror as she got herself ready to go to the home of her future in-laws.
They were very different, she and her mother. Her mother was keenly intelligent and exacting. Gracie was of average intelligence and easygoing. Gracie’s teenage years had been spent in hard attempts to please her mother. She had even pressed herself through constant study and tutoring to get into Bryn Mawr, where her mother insisted she go. She had gotten into the prestigious college by the skin of her teeth and had made it through two years, when, thankfully, illness had given her an excuse to drop out before being kicked out. She spent six months in bed, suffering an indefinable form of chronic fatigue. After she recovered, she refused to return to school. She had gotten away with that by allowing her mother to get her a job as a clerk with the local M. Connor store. This was intended to last only until Gracie was stronger physically, but as it turned out, Gracie had loved it and excelled.
She found her talent in clothing sales. She enjoyed helping people be happy. She succeeded so well that she was awarded an impressive number of promotions and cash bonuses. Finally she had pleased her mother.
In fact, her mother had been so pleased and encouraged that she had wanted Gracie to move on up into a buyer position at the corporate offices, or perhaps even into design—both more respectable, as she saw it. That would require Gracie finishing college, of course.
Gracie had refused. Adamantly. She was saved from a further fight when she was promoted to a management position that handled store openings, and by an executive quite high up in the company. Her mother recognized that it would be poor policy to try to change another executive’s directive. She acquiesced, but was clearly disappointed.
That was when Gracie perceived that her mother was a perpetually disappointed woman, and that she, Gracie, was more or less a contented one. She did not desire the same things as her mother, and she also possessed a certain assurance that what she did desire would come without a lot of striving.
She looked for an excuse to move as far away from her mother as she could manage at the time, which turned out to be the opening of one of the company stores in Dallas. There, she gave in to following her own natural inclinations, which resulted in an amazing happiness. When she moved to open the new store in Oklahoma—even farther from her mother in terms of travel—and met Johnny Berry, she recognized in him someone who was also quite happy and whose desire was the same as her own: namely to be happy, and to be so with her. She knew she had found the man of her dreams.
As a gift for Mrs. Berry, Gracie bought a pot of daisy mums in a basket. She held it on her lap on the drive down to the Berry home.
“I don’t want to get into my mother’s objections to our marriage with your mom and dad,” she informed Johnny. “My mother will eventually come around, and there’s no need to mention anything about it now and get feelings hurt.” She was not at all certain that her mother would come around, but she was a lot happier to hope so.
Johnny said, “Okay.”
“We’ll just say that my mother is really busy at this time, and that you and I want to do the wedding ourselves—that’s the truth, anyway.” She saw a wilted daisy bloom and pinched it off.
“Okay.”
“And we’ll ask your mother to help. She’ll like that, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh,” Johnny said, with a nod.
She rather wished he would speak in more than one-word sentences. Then she took his hand, very grateful for his smile in return and for his pleasing nature.
Spying another small broken bloom, she pinched it off and thoroughly examined the entire plant, pinching off any f lowers that were not perfect. Maybe she was a lot more like her mother than she’d realized.
Gracie volunteered to set the table. The silverware was real silver, handed down through five generations of Emma’s family. The china and crystal were silver-rimmed and handed down through three generations.
There was an arrangement of f lowers as a table centerpiece, the napkins were linen, and a silver coffee and tea set sat ready on the polished sideboard, where Gracie’s gift of daisies also sat. Emma had raved over them. They really did look pretty there, especially with the window blinds that were arranged so that light filtered through.
The entire effect was like something off the cover of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine, and Gracie almost sent Johnny off to locate a camera in order to take a picture to send to her mother.
Although her mother was likely to say, “Good grief, have you ever seen so much old clutter?”
As she carefully placed the table settings and filled the crystal water glasses from an iced pitcher, she could hear the drone of the television in the adjacent family room, where Johnny and his father sat with eyes glued on the television set and the broadcast of a car race. Once or twice a shout went up.
Gracie loved the sound. She felt delighted that her man liked to be at home and to enjoy something with his father. That he had a father, a real family.
She kept an ear tuned toward the kitchen, as well, listening to Emma and her mother, Mrs. Jennings. The two women were physically so different as to not look at all related. Mrs. Jennings’ voice was deep, from at least fifty years of the cigarettes that she stepped outside to enjoy every so often, and her accent was a very long Southern drawl. Emma sounded Southern, too, but her voice was lighter and often laughing. Mrs. Jennings was a good head taller and thicker all around than her daughter, with dark eyes and steel-gray hair, while Emma was blue-eyed, fair and petite. Both women had really nice complexions, although Emma wore a lot of makeup. In Gracie’s opinion, Emma could have done without.
Mrs. Jennings was apparently not as inclined to domesticity as was her daughter. The entire time Emma was preparing the meal, her mother sat on a stool in the kitchen, drinking coffee and talking about an incident at a writers’ conference that she had attended the previous week. Her upset appeared to be with a woman who had told Mrs. Jennings that she could not be from the South because she lived in Oklahoma.
“And it wasn’t so much what she said, it was her attitude, standin’ there with her hand on her hip, sayin’, ‘Oklahoma? That’s not in the South.’ Like she was the last word.”
She was now in about the third full telling of the tale. The first time, Emma had said, “Did you tell her you were from North Carolina?” and that was when Gracie learned that both Emma and her mother were from way over on the East Coast. The information aroused the somewhat unsettling realization that there was so much she did not know about this man with whom she intended to join her life.
This time Emma said, “What did she say when you told her you were from North Carolina?”
“Not really anything. Perhaps she didn’t believe me…or has no concept of the fact that people move around. Bless her heart, she apparently has no idea that the Five Civilized Tribes that made up Oklahoma in the beginnin’ were all from the South. She’s from Georgia. She ought to know how her bunch pushed the Cherokees out here and stole their land, then Sherman sent half the inhabitants of three states runnin’ out this way.”
She spoke with the correcting tone of a history teacher, which she had been. Now retired, Mrs. Jennings wrote essays on social and historical perspectives that were carried in several small-town newspapers.
“I always thought Oklahoma was in the South.” This was Mr. Berry’s mild voice. Gracie looked through the entry to see him standing in front of the open refrigerator. “Maybe she has us confused with Nebraska on the map. Where’s the Coke I put in here a while ago?”
“Well, I don’t think many people know exactly where O
klahoma is,” said Mrs. Jennings. “The weathermen all stand in front of it when givin’ the national weather. And with the sorry state of education in this day and age, no one seems to know that Oklahoma was Confederate during the Civil War. They just rewrite history all the time.”
“That was a long time ago, Mamaw. Western’s the style now,” came Johnny’s playful voice. He called his grandmother Mamaw.
Observing the two through the doorway, Gracie tried to imagine one of their future children calling her mother “Mamaw.” That would happen once.
There was so much food. Sliced ham, potato salad, a vegetable gelatin salad arranged on the salad plates, lima beans—Mrs. Jennings called them butter beans—and corn, candied yams, a cold plate of sliced tomatoes and broccoli and celery sticks, a basket of rolls and rich cornbread of a sort Gracie had not before seen, and several saucers of soft butter and something called chow-chow. Johnny leaned near her ear and whispered that she wouldn’t like it.
“Good mercy, Emma, you cooked like it’s Christmas,” said Mrs. Jennings.
“Well, it is a celebration,” said Emma, with a smile at Gracie and Johnny. Then, to Gracie, “Now, honey, anything you don’t like, you just don’t eat.”
Emma was up twice to get things from the kitchen for Mr. Berry and Johnny. Whenever Johnny ate over at Gracie’s apartment, he got up and got his own salt and pepper and whatever else he might need. She made a mental note to speak to him about doing the same at his mother’s home. She would need to teach him before he got to his father’s age.
Then Mrs. Jennings was addressing her, saying something about knowing a family of Kinneys when she was a child and lived in Washington, D.C. during the war. She meant World War II, Gracie realized.
“Myrna Kinney…I haven’t thought of her in years. I don’t remember her daddy’s name, but they were from somewhere up near Baltimore. I wonder if they could be some of your kin. Stranger things have happened.”
“I don’t recall a Myrna. My mother is an only child—she’s Sylvia Colleen. Her father was also an only child, and so was my great-grandfather. I don’t know about before them.”
“Oh, I was speakin’ about your father’s family. I must be confused. I thought your last name was Kinney.”
Gracie looked at the woman. “Yes, it is. Kinney is my mother’s name. My father’s name was Mercier. Paul Mercier. He and my mother divorced when I was a baby, and my mother returned to her own name. I never knew him.”
She prepared to answer questions as she watched Mrs. Jennings take this in, but then Emma was returning to the table with a basket of fresh hot rolls and saying, “Mama, lots of women started keepin’ their own names back when Gracie was born…or to do like Julia Jenkins-Tinsley down at the post office and use both names.”
“Well, I know that…but it plays havoc with genealogy.”
“Are you goin’ to keep your last name, Gracie?” Emma asked. “I know in business it is sometimes easier.”
Gracie saw Johnny’s eyes widen slightly. She replied that they hadn’t talked about it, but she thought just for the first months she might go by Kinney-Berry and then change all the way over to Berry. “What do you think, Emma?” Johnny’s mother had told Gracie to call her Emma or Mom, but Gracie wasn’t ready yet for Mom. She did want to start by building a bridge with the woman, though.
“That sounds very sensible,” said Emma. “And we are very excited about you two gettin’ married…aren’t we, John Cole?”
“Yes, we are.” Mr. Berry always seemed a little shy but really nice.
Gracie found Johnny’s hand under the table, and he smiled at her.
“I look forward to meetin’ your mother,” said Emma, smiling at Gracie in a way that required a reply.
“And she looks forward to meeting everyone here, too.” Gracie folded her napkin in her lap. “In fact, she wanted to come today, was going to fly down for the weekend. But at the last minute an emergency came up at headquarters—something about the French division. She’s going to have to fly over there in the morning. To Paris. She goes a lot. She’s the only one in their office who can speak French. My grandparents were always taking her over there when she was a child.”
She could hardly believe she had come out with all of that. She looked to see Johnny’s reaction, fearful that he would betray her lying, but he was scooping up chow-chow with a roll, as if it was going to be gone in a minute. And all of what Gracie said could have been true. Her mother did speak fluent French and for that reason handled much of M. Connor’s business in Europe.
“Perhaps I could call her,” Emma said. “I’d like to introduce myself.”
“Oh, she’s hard to catch when these emergencies come up like this. Her hours get erratic. And she might already be gone. She wanted to get the first f light that she could. She said that for the next few weeks she’ll be out of pocket but would be calling me to touch base.”
“Well…I can send her a note. Before you leave, I’d like to get her address. And when you speak to her, please let her know that I look forward to gettin’ to know her.”
“Oh, she wants to meet you, too. She’ll be coming out soon…right after she gets back from France.” She averted her gaze, and her eyes fell on her glass. “This iced tea is delicious. Might I have some more?”
As Emma rose to reach for the pitcher on the sideboard, Mrs. Jennings said, “That’s ice tea, honey. Iced might be grammatically correct, but it isn’t said that way down here. If you want to be grammatical, you could say cold tea.”
“Oh,” Gracie said.
Emma refreshed everyone’s tea, and when she was once more seated, she brought up the subject of the date for the wedding.
“We were thinking the third Saturday in September, if that would work for you.” Gracie watched Emma’s face.
Mrs. Jennings put in that perhaps the church should be consulted to make certain it was available.
But Emma replied that she had asked Pastor Smith that morning, and he had said it was available the entire month of September. “He also said that he is going to check, but he believes the Catholic Church will recognize your marriage in a Methodist Church. Just in case this is important for the future.”
“There’s the Episcopal Church here,” put in Mrs. Jennings. “It’s really pretty…dates from the twenties and has stained-glass windows on either side.”
“Episcopal isn’t the same as Catholic, Mama. Gracie is Catholic.”
“Well, it isn’t so different. They have priests and wear a collar and robe and all that hoo-rah.”
“Some Methodist ministers wear collars and robes and all that stuff, too. It doesn’t make them Catholic.” Emma looked at Gracie with some excitement. “The church is small. It holds about two hundred and fifty, maximum. Do you think that will be okay?”
“I don’t think Methodist ministers wear collars,” Mrs. Jennings interjected. “I’ve never seen one wear a collar.”
Gracie waited to see if Emma would respond to this comment, but she didn’t. Feeling a little uncertain as to which thread of conversation to follow, she said, “We are not planning a very big wedding. We just want family and a few friends. We are going to pay for it ourselves, aren’t we, Johnny?”
“Uh-huh.” Johnny nodded as he finished off a roll.
“Well, we are plannin’ on helpin’ you with the wedding,” said Emma. “We want to…and anyway, it is tradition for the parents of the groom to pay for the weddin’ ring, the groomsmen’s gifts, the bouquet, the mothers’ corsages, things like that.”
Gracie took this in and felt a little apprehensive.
“Okay,” Johnny said, reaching for the last roll in the basket. Gracie had never seen him eat so much. He loved his mother’s cooking. She had been trying to pay attention to the dishes and was going to look everything up in a cookbook.
Emma began talking of the various relatives who were likely to come into town for the wedding and making plans for booking a block of rooms at the Goodnight Motel.
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br /> “My mother will stay up at my apartment,” Gracie said quickly, thinking that her mother would come unglued at the idea of staying at the aging motel on the edge of town. Her mother was particular about amenities.
Gracie explained that one of her friends was going to give her a wedding shower. Emma proposed giving them a couple’s bridal shower to introduce Gracie to the family and a few neighbors in Valentine.
“That way you can get to meet the family before the weddin’ in a relaxed atmosphere,” she said. “I read all about it in one of the weddin’ magazines.”
Gracie was touched by the idea and getting more nervous by the minute about the woman’s enthusiasm. She felt it likely that things could get out of control.
They did. Somehow the event ended up turning into a backyard barbeque, with Johnny’s father cooking steak and pork ribs in his secret sauce, a soda-fountain machine from one of the Berry stores, and possibly tap beer. Mrs. Jennings put in the suggestion of where to get plastic cups and paper plates at discount.
Gracie didn’t think it was going to look much like the lawn-party bridal shower she had attended once in Philadelphia.
9
Mother of the Groom
Emma remembered her camera before the kids left. “We have to get a picture for the engagement announcement!”
The late golden sunlight was perfect. She positioned them at the front fender of the Mustang. “Yes, yes, I want you in front of the car.”
When she got through taking Johnny and Gracie’s picture, she had John Cole get in with them. He was always reluctant to have his picture taken. He liked to be cajoled, and Emma did so. After this, she had her mother join in. Her mother then took a picture of Emma and John Cole with Johnny and Gracie. It was all so much like old times, when Johnny had lived at home.
Chin Up, Honey Page 6
