Olivia

by Donna Sturgeon

  “They split,” Izzie explained in response to Olivia’s surprise as they settled onto their matching stools.

  “What happened?” Olivia asked.

  Izzie shrugged, but Carla said, “I hear he’s sweet on Yvette.”

  “George’s Yvette?” Olivia gasped. The hussy!

  “I heard Stephie’s pregnant, and that’s why Sam dumped her,” Louise whispered a little too loudly over the sound of the whirring conveyor.

  Usually the first one to jump in on gossip, Melanie stayed quiet in the corner. Olivia watched her out of the corner of her eye as she leaned in and asked Izzie, “What’s wrong with Mel?”

  “Her man was denied parole,” Izzie said. “The wedding’s canceled.”

  “What happened? I thought it was a sure thing.”

  “It was… until he made a shiv out of his toothbrush and stabbed a guard.”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  Izzie shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

  “Huh.” Olivia huffed. She kept one eye on Melanie as she plugged into her iPod and took a pull off her Dr. Pepper. Melanie glanced up for a moment, eyes to heaven, then immediately turned her attention back to her calipers. Her eyes were red and puffy and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Poor girl. Olivia knew exactly how she felt.

  At lunch, Olivia sought Melanie out, but she wasn’t easy to find. After searching the entire plant top to bottom, she finally found her sitting in her minivan, which was one of Garretson’s biggest lunchtime no-no’s. The employee manual stated safety reasons for the rule, but it was bullshit. The real reason was the idiots in upper-management were convinced every single hourly employee was a crack head. Some were, true, but it’s not like they couldn’t get high in the restroom just as easily as they could in their car. Morons.

  Olivia checked to make sure the coast was clear before gently knocking on the window. Melanie turned away from her. Olivia had to do a lot of sweet talking before Melanie would unlock the door for her. Once she did, Olivia slipped inside and carefully closed the door so it wouldn’t slam.

  The van smelled of McDonald’s fries, baby wipes and despair. A mess of used Kleenex filled Melanie’s lap like a snotty mound of snowballs, and more tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She gazed off into the distance, toward the flashing light on top of the Juliette water tower, her chin quivering as Waylon Jennings crooned “Green River” over the radio at low volume.

  Olivia chewed on her lower lip, unsure what to do or where to start. She knew heartbreak, but poor Mel looked as though her heart had been ripped out, ground up, and then pulverized into an oozy puddle of bloody mush. Given Mel’s fragile emotional state, Olivia knew she should probably ease into the conversation, but they only had six minutes remaining on their lunch break. She skipped the small talk and dove right in there.

  “What happened with the parole board?”

  Melanie shrugged. “They said he wasn’t sorry enough for almost killing those people on the Interstate. They said he needed more time to consider what he did. But it’s bull-poo, you know?”

  Olivia nodded and said, “I know,” even though she kind of agreed with the parole board.

  “He said he was sorry and he promised he wouldn’t do it again. I don’t know what more they want from him.”

  “I don’t know, either.”

  “I mean, do they want him to cut off his arm or something? Cuz he’d do it if it proved he was sorry. He’d do anything to get out of jail. He hates it there. He looks like heck. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t have any friends. He just wants to come home and see his babies.” Melanie blew her nose. It sounded surprisingly dainty for the amount of snot her tears had to be producing. “I can’t sleep knowing how miserable he is. It’s not fair that I’m out here and he’s stuck in there just because he read the sign wrong. He doesn’t read real good, you know? He just got confused.”

  “He was high, Mel,” Olivia reminded her.

  Melanie turned away, her chin quivering again as she stared out the window. “He said he was sorry.”

  Olivia didn’t know what to say. She never was one who was good at comforting other people. She was good at getting people drunk and making them laugh. She was good at annoying people until they either screamed or smiled. But comforting? Not Olivia’s specialty. She looked out her own window and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound fake.

  “You know what the really poopy thing is?” Melanie asked.

  “What?”

  Melanie wiped her eyes. “I already paid all these deposits and I can’t get ‘em back.”

  “Deposits for what?”

  “Our wedding.” She sniffed. “For the minister and the party. I was gonna have the reception at the Pizza Hut in the party room and they charged me a hundred bucks to rent it and they said it’s non-refundable.” She sniffed again and dabbed at her eyes with an already-used, soggy Kleenex. “They don’t care that there ain’t no wedding. They said it’s too late to cancel cuz they can’t find nobody to take my place, but I think they’re full of diarrhea. They’d get somebody else in there in no time. Everybody loves the Pizza Hut, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Olivia agreed. You’d have to be crazy not to love the Pizza Hut.

  “And I bought all these balloons and those paper streamers that you twist together. You know the ones? I bought pink and purple for our wedding colors, just like the last time. Oh, and my dress is real fancy, Liv.” She turned toward Olivia, her face brightening at the mention of the dress. “It’s super tight and has these big circles cut out of the sides with like metal rivets or something around ‘em so it shows off some skin. I look real hot in it, too. Like I did before I had all my babies, you know? Carl Jr. wouldn’ta been able to keep his hands off’a me.”

  “Who’s Carl Jr.?” Olivia asked.

  Melanie frowned and looked at Olivia as if she were stupid. “My man.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Olivia said. “I knew that.” She didn’t. Or maybe she did… whatever.

  “And I bought the girls pretty little dresses that match each other and a tie for C.J.”

  “Uh-huh.” Olivia had no clue who C.J. was. She assumed it was a pet name for Carl Jr., but it could have been one of Melanie’s kids, or maybe even her dog. She didn’t want to look stupid again, so she didn’t ask. “Why don’t you get married at the pen? People do that all the time.”

  “Carl Jr. says no. He says he won’t let me marry him while he’s a caged man. He said over his dead body would I be spendin’ my honeymoon alone.”

  “Oh.” Well, there went that idea.

  Olivia chewed on her bottom lip and thought about the poor kids and Melanie sitting around their cramped and shitty Section Eight apartment on the day of the wedding in their dress-up clothes with nowhere to go, and suddenly she had another, better idea.

  “Why don’t you have the party anyway?” Olivia asked. The more she thought about it the better it sounded. “Yeah! Let’s all go to Pizza Hut and you can have the minister come out and marry you and Carl Jr. in spirit, and then we can all pig out on stuffed crust and get drunk. Pizza Hut sells beer right?”

  “Yeah, but… I don’t know,” Melanie said with a sad shake of her head.

  “Oh come on, Mel. Let’s go party it up at Pizza Hut and celebrate your love for your man and you can put your ring back on and when he gets paroled we can do it all over again.” Olivia started to bounce in her seat a little from her excitement. “How many people do you know who get to marry the same man three times?”

  Melanie turned toward Olivia, a slow smile starting to push away the sadness. “None.”

  “That’s right.” Olivia started to bounce in her seat in excitement. “No one else loves their man as much as you do. And you’ll still get your extra assistance for being a single mom, but in your heart you’ll be married.”

  Melanie looked down at her left hand. “But I don’t got my ring no more. I had to hock it when Carly got the strep.”

  “Where’s it at?�
�� Good gravy, were all of her kids named after her man?

  “T.R’s got it. He only gave me fifty bucks, but he wants two hundred to get it back.”

  “T.R.’s an ass. Why didn’t you use Dusty?”

  Melanie started to cry again.

  “Well…” Olivia sighed and thought about it. “Why don’t I ask the girls and maybe we can all pitch in together and get you your ring back. It’ll be our gift to you and Carl Jr.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Melanie’s eyes grew wide and her smile got bigger and bigger until it consumed her entire face. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell my babies Mommy and Daddy are married again!”

  And so that’s how Olivia happened to be standing in a Pizza Hut, dressed to the hilt in rhinestones and a fire-engine red, strapless cocktail dress on a sweltering afternoon in late-May. She was irritated and cranky, sweating her ass off, and her thighs kept sticking together, but she was there for Mel and that’s all that mattered.

  The entire gang from Garretson showed up, along with a dozen or so people from Melanie’s apartment complex. Add to that number Melanie’s three-hundred-pound mother, Melanie’s four screaming kids and all of their screaming friends, two hundred balloons and seven miles of pink and purple streamers, and it made for very tight, very loud quarters in the party room that had a maximum capacity of twenty-five.

  The minister showed up ten minutes after Olivia. Despite the sauna outside, he had been in quite the jovial mood when he first arrived, but five minutes in the Pizza Hut was all it took for the heat and the noise to erase his smile and turn his face and neck a shade of red Olivia had never seen before. Olivia had a feeling his funny coloring might also have had a little something to do with the fact that Melanie had not been entirely forthcoming with him regarding the delicate intricacies of this particular ceremony, but it was just a hunch.

  Olivia didn’t see what the big deal was, but apparently, a photo of Carl Jr. tacked to a coat rack was not an acceptable second party in a wedding, even if it had been downgraded to a commitment ceremony instead of the traditional vows. The minister huffed and puffed and talked about calling the whole thing off if another human body did not join Melanie under the wire arch. Melanie tried again to explain how Carl Jr. was unfortunately detained, but he was a stickler for the rules. Two bodies, or no vows. When he cried out one last time for Carl Jr. to join his bride-to-be or he was leaving, Melanie panicked.

  And that’s why Olivia raised her hand and said, “Right here.”

  The minister’s eyebrows shot straight up as Olivia pushed through the crowd, his hand flying to his chest as though he was in the throes of a massive coronary. He recovered quickly, his surprised expression transforming into furious glower as his eyes raked her head to toe. “Carl Jr., I assume?”

  “Yes?” Olivia answered the question with a question. She had no clue who she was. She hadn’t thought past the raising her hand part. She was totally winging it.

  Melanie’s eyes shot from Olivia to the minister and back to Olivia. “Uh…”

  “Mel, darling, you look beautiful.” Olivia air kissed Melanie on the cheeks like a Frenchman. “So sorry I’m late. I had some technical difficulties getting dressed.” She leaned into the minister, and, in the deepest male voice she could muster, she whispered conspiratorially, “I don’t know how bad this heat’s affecting you today, but my balls are hangin’ like overripe watermelons in a fat man’s hammock.”

  She regretted it as soon as she said it.

  The minister turned purple, smoke rolled from his ears, and Olivia blushed. Crap.

  “Carl, darling,” Melanie said on a growl. “May I speak with you for a moment? In private!”

  Melanie didn’t wait for an answer. She yanked Olivia by her arm, dragged her into the corner of the room and hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”

  It was the first time Olivia had ever heard Mel cuss. Oh man, she was pissed.

  “Do you want to get married in spirit to Carl Jr. or not?” Olivia asked.

  Melanie looked as though she were about to burst into tears. “Yes.”

  “Then shut up and follow my lead,” Olivia whispered. She turned toward the arch, but Melanie grabbed her again, her grasp remarkably strong. “Ow!”

  That was going to leave a mark.

  “We can’t do this, Liv!”

  “Why not?” Olivia pried Melanie’s fingers out of the flesh of her upper arm.

  “It’s lying to God,” she whispered and frantically pointed upward, as if Olivia didn’t have a clue where God lived.

  “We’re not lying to God, Mel,” Olivia assured her. “God understands. Carl Jr. understands. Everyone here understands… Well, almost everyone… Give me a sec and I’ll figure out a way to explain it to the minister…”

  “I can’t…” Melanie’s eyes filled with tears. “Reverend Delany is a good man, Liv. A real good man. He helped me find God when I was sure He was gone for good, and if he thinks it’s wrong…”

  “It’s not about right or wrong, or black or white, Mel. It’s about loving and honoring and cherishing. It’s about you promising to God in front of all of these people that you will be faithfully committed to the man you love—for better or for worse—for the rest of your life.”

  Melanie opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came out except a whimper of the anguish seeping from her heart.

  “Think of me as the vessel of Carl’s spirit. Close your eyes if you have to, and imagine you’re saying the vows to him instead of me, and hold those words in your heart until he comes home and can whisper them to you himself.”

  “I can’t…” Melanie faltered as her eyes drifted over toward the minister and his futile attempts to escape. Bless Sam’s heart; his wide girth and stubborn stance made it impossible. The guy truly was a brick shithouse, and he guarded the exit of the Pizza Hut with every crumb of mortar in his arsenal. “What’ll my babies think?”

  Olivia looked over at the gaggle of children screaming and carrying on as they played with the balloons. She had no idea which of the munchkins were Melanie’s, but if she had to guess she would say they were the four dressed head-to-toe in pink and purple. The oldest looked to be five at the most, and even she was more interested in the balloons than in what was going on under the arch.

  “We’ll explain it to them together after the minister leaves if we have to—”

  “No, no, no,” Melanie interrupted with a determined stomp of her foot. “I can’t lie to the reverend and pretend you’re Carl Jr. when you’re a… woman.”

  “You didn’t have any problem with Carl Jr. being a coat rack. Saying I’m him is the exact same thing, but at least with me you’ll have a warm hand to hold.” Olivia clasped Melanie’s hands in hers and squeezed tight to prove the healing power of human touch. “And these are only vows of commitment anyway. The real vows come later, at the real ceremony, with the real man.”

  “But…”

  “Ok. How about we ask Sam to fill in instead?”

  “No!” Melanie shook her head so fast Olivia was sure it would fling off. “I could never marry another man!”

  Olivia threw her hands up in frustration. “What do you want to do then, Mel?”

  Melanie burst into tears. “I want to marry Carl Jr.!”

  “Oh, Honey…” Olivia wrapped her arms around Melanie and stroked her hair. “I know you do, but he’s not here. If you want to marry Carl Jr. today, this is how it has to be.”

  She let Melanie cry it out until the sobs downgraded into sniffles. Once they did, she gently lifted Melanie’s head off her shoulder and wiped at her tears with her thumb.

  “I’m not trying to force you into anything here, Mel. This is your call entirely. I would be honored to stand in for Carl Jr. for you, but if you don’t want to do it, we won’t.”

  Melanie stared slack-jawed at Olivia while she processed what was going on. Finally, she nodded her approval.

  “Good.” Olivia smiled then leaned in and whispered, “But when t
he minister says to kiss the bride, no slipping me the tongue.”

  Melanie gasped in horror. “Oh, no! I would never do that!”

  Olivia laughed and linked her arm with Mel’s, and they returned to the arch as a happy and united, albeit unusual, couple. As Reverend Delany stepped up to them, Olivia opened her mouth to plead their case, but he silenced her with a sharp shake of his head. He turned to Melanie, his expression softening at the sight of her tear-streaked face and the unshed tears still shining in her eyes. His closed his eyes and stood silent for a long moment as though listening to an inner voice, then opened his Bible, and began.

  The ceremony was short—extremely short—but it was intimate and it was personal, spiritually beautiful in both meaning and intention. When Olivia slipped the thin, gold band onto Melanie’s finger, her heart actually felt as though it could take wing and fly. In that moment, she fell in love with Melanie, just a little bit.

  At the end of the ceremony, they kept their tongues to themselves as they fumbled through the kiss. Kenny wore a huge, shit-eating grin while he snapped hundreds of pictures of it from every possible angle, and Sam wolf-whistled and called for an encore. As soon as Izzie and Carla signed the commitment certificate as witnesses, Reverend Delany headed for the door.

  Olivia started to chase him down so she could apologize for her stupid hammock comment, and thank him for being so understanding, but Kenny grabbed her by the arm and whipped her back around.

  “Best to leave it alone for now, Liv.” He handed her a beer. “I think your mouth has done enough damage for one day.”

  “Yeah… I suppose.” Olivia pressed the cool glass bottle to her overheated forehead. Man, what a day. Who knew weddings could be so exhausting? “Maybe I’ll send him a Christmas card… in a year or two… when he forgets who I am.”

  Kenny laughed as he flung his arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “Hate to break it to you, Liver, but I highly doubt that’ll ever happen.”