A Wedding on the Beach

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Well, I’ll just have to wait and see, won’t I?” Nathan said. “In the meantime, put me to work. I’ve got the dolly and the hand truck out back.”

  Bess put her hands on her hips—such as they were. She was a small woman with a boyish figure that belied her physical strength. “The big credenza needs to be moved. It looked just right in the pictures Kara sent, but now that I see it in person I’m convinced it would look so much better against the opposite wall. The love seat will have to be repositioned and we might have to move that rug out of the way first. What do you think?”

  Nathan grimaced. “I think I’m sorry I asked. But just a bit,” he added hurriedly. “Let me get my back brace first. It won’t do to have the groom in traction.”

  Chapter 5

  Mike turned his attention from the road for a half a second to look meaningfully at his wife.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Marta smiled brightly. “Fine,” she said. “You?”

  Eyes on the road again, Mike laughed. “I’m fine. I’m not the one who’s—”

  “Not sick,” Marta said a bit testily. When would Mike get it through his head that pregnancy was not an illness? He meant well, of course, but his archaic attitude could be infuriating.

  Mike began to hum along with the radio. When Marta was the driver she preferred silence; no music, no conversation. She and Mike were so different in so many ways that at times it made for those ridiculous conflicts that could all too easily escalate into a full-blown argument resulting in hurt feelings. You would think that after twenty-five years in a relationship a person would no longer fall prey to minor irritations like the other person’s habit of eating his coffee cake in two phases—crumb topping first, followed by the plain cake underneath—or a person’s habit of putting ketchup on her scrambled eggs. But Marta and Mike did fall prey to these irritations. Thankfully, they were almost always entirely in sympathy regarding the topics that really mattered. Almost always.

  Marta let her thoughts drift. Unsurprisingly, they made shore on the subject of Bess’s wedding. With the bride’s okay, Marta had chosen to wear a dress she already owned. And as she was still far from showing there had been no need to pay for alterations. If she could find a skilled tailor, that is. In a throwaway culture, tailors and shoemakers and anyone who could salvage a broken household appliance were a dying breed. It was a pity.

  More important than what Marta was going to wear to the event was what she was going to say. She had begun to write her maid of honor speech weeks ago. She was used to public speaking; being chairwoman of endless committees had made her an expert at grabbing the attention of a crowd and holding on to it. But this was different. She had never stood before a group of friends and family eagerly awaiting a heartfelt, slightly humorous, and ultimately tear-jerking tribute to a person they loved. Marta was still tinkering with the speech and suspected she would be crossing out lines and inserting catchy phrases until the very last minute before she was called to raise her glass.

  A glass that would belong to a set of Riedel glassware provided by the exorbitantly expensive caterer Bess was sure to have hired. Marta, priding herself on budgeting down to the last penny, was often critical of Bess’s extravagance and had to remind herself that Bess had every right to spend whatever amount of money she cared to spend. She earned it, after all, and she wasn’t burdened with three children and another on the way.

  Marta frowned. An interesting choice of words. Burdened. She was certain she had never chosen that word before to describe her domestic situation. Marta glanced at her husband. He certainly didn’t look like a man who felt burdened by his family. In fact, at that moment he looked a picture of contentment, tooling along the open road, listening to popular songs.

  The man Marta had chosen to marry. Her soul mate?

  Truth be told, there had been times when Marta had wished that Bess would abandon her belief in a soul mate. Adhering to the idea that there was one perfect someone out there hadn’t helped Bess when it came to discriminating between the eminently unsuitable (there had been a white-collar criminal) and the potentially desirous (until that one was revealed as a bigamist). But she had never said as much to Bess because Marta knew she had been lucky. She and Mike had virtually stumbled upon each other. Were they soul mates? Did it matter? And what did Marta know about the beliefs that sustained a person yet to meet someone compatible enough with whom she could build a rich and satisfying life? She knew nothing.

  At least things had come right in the end. Nathan Creek was the real deal. Elected by Mike, Chuck, and Allison to check him out, Marta had flown to Boston to spend a day with the happy couple. Everything about the visit had been a success. Nathan, who had lost his first wife to cancer when they were both in their early thirties, was charming and intelligent. He looked attentively at Bess when she spoke, and his responses to her statements or questions revealed that unlike so many men he actually listened to what his partner was saying.

  Try as she might, Marta could find nothing wrong with him and she had taken her leave with hugs and kind words. Once back in her hotel room she had texted Chuck, Allison, and Mike the following message: He’s the one.

  Marta’s cell phone jangled. It was the ringtone she had chosen for Leo. He was a jangling sort of kid.

  “Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I just got a call from camp,” he said matter-of-factly. “You should expect a text soon. There’s been an outbreak of some sort of virus among the counselors and the place is shutting down for at least a week. Frankly, it doesn’t matter one way or the other to me—I can learn more on my own—but I thought you might like to be informed.”

  “Thanks, I do like to be informed when one of my offspring is cut loose for a week. And why didn’t the camp contact me or your father before you?” Marta rubbed her eyes. “Might I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t spend the entire week holed up with your phone and computer. Get some fresh air. Run around a bit. Play catch with Troy. Go to the golf course with your grandfather.”

  “I’ll take your suggestions under consideration,” Leo said flatly. “Tell Dad to pay attention to the road. He gets too distracted by the radio.”

  Leo signed off and Marta sighed. “I know he’s my own flesh and blood, but I swear sometimes he freaks me out. Was he born an adult?”

  “Not when he’s forbidden seconds of ice cream after dinner.” Mike smiled. “Leo is an unusual kid, but you handle him so well. You really are Super Mom.”

  “Hmmm,” Marta said, looking out the passenger side window at the passing landscape.

  “Hey, did I tell you that Stan’s wife is in Japan for two months?” Mike went on. “She’s taking an advanced course in Ikebana. Stan is beside himself. Marcia left everything in tip-top shape, of course, you know what she’s like, super organized, but not a day goes by when he doesn’t show up to work with a major trauma to report, like not being able to find the milk—how do you lose a bottle of milk!—or not being able to figure out the TV remote. I don’t know, Marta. I chuckle when he goes on about his sorry life, but I know I’d be the same way if you ever decided to go away for a week. That one night you spent in Boston a few months ago was tough enough!”

  Marta managed a smile. Mike meant his words as a compliment and a sincere one at that, but in truth she felt annoyed. She would prefer to be missed for the passion she evoked in her husband’s breast, not for her efficiency. But she was an efficient person, and proud of it. When Mike was called away on business Marta managed just fine without him. Okay, a week wasn’t a lifetime, but there was no doubt in Marta’s mind that she was more than competent to handle the world on her own.

  Well, if not the world, then her world, the one that involved managing the family’s finances, supervising the day-to-day running of the household, seeing to the kids’ education and after-school activities, keeping her involvement in the community alive, assuring that Mike was in a st
ate of decent dress, and . . . And what? What did she organize or handle or assure for herself, only herself? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Marta frowned. Sometimes it felt like being a wife and mother had served to erase the person beneath—below? behind?—those social roles. And the unexpected fourth child would seriously damage, if not destroy, her nascent plans to build a life of her own that had nothing to do with the domestic duties that had come to feel so deadly dull, even stupifying.

  “Oh, I love this song!” Mike cried.

  Mike began to warble what he thought were the words to the bouncy tune. Mike didn’t listen to lyrics all that closely. Sort of like how he didn’t listen all that closely to what his wife was saying.

  “Wait, you used to love this one!” Mike now exclaimed as the opening bars of Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday Is a Winding Road” sounded through the car.

  Marta leaned her head against the headrest and wondered. Had she once loved this song? She couldn’t remember. Odd. But maybe not so odd. So much had happened since college; her life had become weighed down by a million little details and distractions and disturbances and responsibilities . . . And all had served to dim memories of the time when Marta Kennedy existed on her own, beholden to nobody but herself.

  Those were the days, Marta thought, of freedom and happiness. Sometimes—but only sometimes—she missed them.

  “How are you feeling?” Mike asked again.

  Only sometimes.

  Chapter 6

  The rental car was a bit larger than what Allison liked to drive, but better she supposed than being cramped. She didn’t like to feel cramped. And the air-conditioning worked, something you couldn’t always be sure of in a rental car, in spite of assurances. All in all, she felt comfortable behind the wheel as she made her way north to Maine.

  For the thousandth time, Allison mentally reviewed the contents of her travel bags, stowed in the trunk of the car. She didn’t think she had forgotten anything vital and even if she had, southern Maine was hardly the end of the world. And there was always Amazon. One thing Allison had not brought with her on the flight from Chicago was a special gift for Bess. In addition to the photo documentation of the festivities she would put together after the wedding, Allison had made Bess a painting. She had wanted to give her something more personal than a contribution to one of her favorite charities, though it could be argued that such a donation was a highly personal gift indeed.

  The idea for the painting had come to Allison not long before when she had come across a photo of herself and Bess taken in Salem, Massachusetts, in their junior year. (A fellow tourist had obligingly taken the shot, this being before the time of selfies.) The highlight of their day trip was a tour of the famed House of Seven Gables, a timber-framed mansion built in 1668 and made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the novel by that name. The building was said to be haunted, though, as their guide pointed out before the tour began, only the most highly attuned people were able to sense the otherworldly presences. It turned out that Allison and Bess were highly attuned people. Bess had gotten seriously dizzy on the staircase to the attic, home, it was said, to the ghost of a young boy; her hands were shaking badly by the time they reached the top of the stairs, where Allison had been overcome by a sense of cold and sickness. Ghosts. No doubt about it. They had been glad to get away, but the experience had fascinated them and been the topic of much conversation for a long time to come. Conversation between Allison and Bess. Neither had told their friends about their supernatural experience. They knew an unreceptive audience when they saw one.

  Allison half smiled as she passed a car loaded with canoes and bicycles; a family heading to Maine, the Vacation State, where life was the way it should be. If she had driven all the way from Chicago she would have brought the painting along; as it was she had sent it on ahead to Driftwood House. And if a portrait of The House of Seven Gables seemed an odd one for a wedding present, no doubt Allison’s emotional distress could be blamed. She remembered now the images she had conjured of Driftwood House as a place of almost Gothic gloominess. Another haunted house? Not likely.

  Not for Bess Culpepper’s long-awaited wedding day. Allison frowned. The very last thought that would cross Bess’s mind as she joined hands with Nathan was that the man she was marrying before the eyes of friends, family, and God might one day be divorcing her. But it could happen. It did happen.

  And in Allison’s case it was all because of Chris’s obsessive desire for a child to replace the brother he had lost so long ago.

  They had been trying the good old-fashioned way to have a child for several years before Chris suggested they investigate Assisted Reproductive Technology. Allison, eager to start a family, had agreed.

  What they had learned was sobering.

  While there was no denying the importance of ART, there was also no denying the many risks involved. Egg retrieval could result in bleeding or infection, or even damage to the bladder or bowel. And there was the chance of multiple pregnancies and the attendant moral and economic issues that raised.

  Allison and Chris had been made to realize the significant financial, physical, and emotional commitment involved in undertaking a course of ART. One round of IVF could cost up to $17,000. And ART did not guarantee results. In the United States, the live birth rate for each IVF cycle started for a woman between the age of thirty-eight and forty—the category into which Allison fell during the final round she had undertaken—was a mere twenty-three to twenty-seven percent. And the rate of miscarriage was similar to that of an unassisted conception; in both situations, the risk of a miscarriage increased with the age of the mother. Chris knew that. They had been told often enough.

  But nothing seemed to matter to Chris after the miscarriage, only the fact that—as he saw it—Allison had destroyed his attempt to bring his brother back to life.

  As she often did, Allison glanced at her wedding ring. Her engagement ring, a two-carat asscher cut diamond set in platinum, was in a private safe deposit box. She wasn’t afraid of Chris’s taking the ring from her. Not really. At least, the old Chris would never have dreamed of doing such a thing. Then again, the old Chris would never have dreamed of divorcing his grieving wife.

  The last time she saw Chris—the day he had moved out of their home and back in with his parents—he hadn’t been wearing his wedding ring. Sometimes she wondered what he did with it. Sometimes she told herself she didn’t care, not even about what Chris felt about his soon-to-be ex-wife attending Bess’s wedding with the other members of their tribe. For all Allison knew Chris could be dating someone, even planning to propose after the divorce became final. Maybe this woman had already proved her fertility; maybe Chris was poised to be a stepfather as well as a father of his own biological child before long.

  The driver to her right leaned on his horn. “Damn it,” Allison muttered. She had drifted. She hadn’t been paying full attention. Maybe she should have had that cup of coffee before leaving the airport after all. She felt a wave of exhaustion overcome her, and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. Why was she doing this to herself? Who was she doing this for? Who among the old college gang did she genuinely still feel close to? Was remembered affection as valuable as current affection? Did it matter in the end?

  Allison’s head began to hurt. Maybe, she thought, she should turn the car around and drive back to the airport. She could be in Chicago in a matter of hours. Bess would understand. It was too much to ask of Allison to participate in a friend’s joyous moment when her own heart was broken beyond repair.

  But then Allison thought of all the times when Bess had been there for her. When Allison’s computer had died while she was writing her end-of-term papers, Bess had worked into the night to retrieve the important files. When her wallet had been stolen and with it the cash she had budgeted for the month, Bess, never flush herself, had loaned her enough money to get through. And when Allison had broken an arm while Chris was on a business trip in Poland, Bess had flown to Chicago to hel
p Allison around the house before she was able to go back to work. Both Allison and Chris had been so grateful.

  You could count on Bess Culpepper. And she can count on me, Allison told herself, sitting straighter behind the wheel. With grim determination, Allison continued north to Maine.

  Chapter 7

  “You’re glowing!” Mike announced the moment Bess opened the door.

  Bess laughed. “I think a bride is supposed to blush and an expectant mother to glow.”

  Mike looked well, if tired. He was still a handsome guy, though a bit on the pudgy side, no doubt due to long hours stuck at a desk. Marta looked tense, but she often looked tense. Nothing new there.

  “Well,” Marta said when she had hugged Bess. “Let me see the ring.”

  “It’s an antique cushion cut diamond,” Bess explained. “I had it set in a custom rose gold design. Do you love it?”

  Marta laughed. “Yes, Bess,” she said, “I love it.” Marta’s own engagement ring was comprised of a small, but good, round, brilliant diamond set on a plain yellow gold band; the wedding band matched. “Hey,” Bess had heard Marta say on more than one occasion, “I have more important things on which to spend my money than diamond upgrades.” Bess assumed, of course, that by “things” Marta meant her children and their education.

  Nathan, who had been on the phone with his office, now emerged from the den, hand outstretched to greet Mike and Marta. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “Bess isn’t the most patient person when it comes to waiting for her guests.”

  Bess shrugged. “I get worried,” she said. “But you’re here now and the festivities can begin. Your bedroom is on the second floor; you’ll be sharing a bathroom with Allison. I’ve stocked the house with everyone’s favorites, but if there’s anything you need or want that I’ve forgotten just let me know. If I can’t get it locally I’ll ask Kara to hunt it out in Portland and drive down with it.”