Revenge of the Flower Girls

by Jennifer Ziegler

  I guess I should have felt bad about our deception, especially since Lily seemed so relieved to have help, but I didn’t. At least what we were doing wasn’t against the law.

  “You should be able to reach me on my cell phone in a couple of hours,” she said as we stood on the front porch. “If anyone calls, take messages for me. Mom has credit card information if they need that, but try not to disturb her otherwise. Oh, and Mrs. Caldwell is coming over this evening to help, so please play hostess if I’m not back yet.”

  “Oh joy,” I mumbled, but only Delaney heard me.

  Lily then hugged us and drove away. Before her white Toyota had disappeared from view, we could hear the phone ringing inside. There was a little jam in the doorway as all three of us ran for it at once. Delaney got there first.

  “Hello? Yes, this is the Brewster residence,” we heard her say. “Yes…. Really? … So you’re all booked up?” Delaney gave us a big smile and a thumbs-up. “No, that’s totally okay. Thank you so much! Good-bye.”

  She hung up the phone and then bounced up and down on her toes, saying, “No go! No go! North Oak Inn is a no-go!” Soon we were all bouncing up and down, chanting along with her, until Mom came in and asked us what we were carrying on about. Delaney said “nothing,” that we were just playing a silly game. Mom reminded us of the time we got so caught up in a reenactment of the Kennedy assassination that Ms. Woolcott got worried and called the sheriff.

  “Besides, I have deadlines and can’t risk getting a headache, your sister is stressed over this wedding, and Mrs. Caldwell is coming over and she already thinks we’re a house full of barbarians,” she added.

  As soon as we looked adequately sorry and agreed to keep our voices down to non-worrisome and non-irritating levels, Mom thanked us and left.

  Then the phone rang again. This time, Darby grabbed it. It was the Elks Lodge, which was sad to inform us that their clubhouse was not available until October. This time, we celebrated with a silent dance and soft high fives. The next couple of hours were full of rejoicing. When Hochmeister’s Biergarten called to say they weren’t available, we had ice cream and clinked our spoons together. When the SPJST Hall said they had only two dates in September open, we ran to the front yard to do cartwheels.

  We also took turns checking off venues from the list Lily left. By three o’clock, there was only one place left on the page. We were sitting in the living room, playing Spite and Malice, when the phone rang again. I grabbed it before the others could. Sure enough, it was some lady asking for Lily.

  “She isn’t in right now, but this is her sister Dawn. May I take a message?”

  “This is Shirley down at the Bluebonnet House. Please tell her we got her message and are happy to host her wedding.”

  “Really?” I suddenly felt really heavy and sank down into the nearby armchair. “Are you sure?” I gave my sisters a distress-signal look. Darby’s eyes got big, and Delaney mouthed the words Oh no!

  The lady chuckled. “Why, yes! We had an event cancellation only yesterday. I’ll just need the deposit and a bit more information. Do you know how many guests there will be?”

  A teeny lightbulb — like the size you find on a strand of Christmas lights — blinked on in my mind. “Um … I think about five hundred,” I said.

  “Five hundred?” she repeated. “Five hundred people? Are you sure?”

  “Oh yes,” I replied, feeling a little more confident. “At least that many. We have a very big family and lots of friends.”

  “Dear me. I don’t think we can fit a crowd that size…. And the parking …”

  “Don’t worry about the parking,” I said. “Most of us will ride up on horseback.”

  “Horseback?”

  “Yes, Lily insists. She’s a big animal lover. In fact, our dog, Quincy, is going to be the best man.” Quincy, who had been snoozing under the nearby table, lifted his head and looked at me. I tried not to laugh. Delaney, in the meantime, had both of her hands clamped over her mouth and was bright red from holding in her giggles.

  “I’m afraid there are health codes we have to follow,” the lady said. “I just don’t think we can host such an event. I’m so sorry. Is there any way your sister might change her mind on some of these things? Might I speak with her later, when she returns?”

  “I highly doubt she will change her mind. And I’m not sure when she’ll be back. She’s in Austin looking to hire … bagpipe players. For the music.”

  At this, Delaney let out a snorting sound so loud, Quincy jumped to his feet and glanced around for the wild animal. It took every bit of power in every one of my cells to not crack up.

  “Well, then, I’m afraid we simply cannot help her,” the lady said. “I am very sorry. Please pass along my regrets. We wish her luck with her … um … her everything.”

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I collapsed onto the rug, laughing. Darby and Delaney flopped down next to me and we rolled around guffawing and hooting and forgetting to be quiet until Mom came out and gave us a scary warning look.

  “Is that it?” I asked after Mom went back to her office. “Is that all of the venues?”

  Darby rolled over to the coffee table and snatched Lily’s list. “Yep. That’s all of them.”

  The three of us looked at each other. Then Delaney said, “We did it. We really did it. Now they have to delay the wedding.”

  “And that will give us time to convince Lily she’s making a mistake,” I said.

  “And get her and Alex together,” Darby added.

  This got us all excited again, so we went outside, where we could whoop and holler and turn cartwheels and not disturb Mom. Eventually, the heat forced us back inside for some iced tea. We were in the middle of debating whether to celebrate with a trip to Forever’s for more pie or a romp in the sprinklers, when Lily walked in.

  “So how did it go?” she asked, hanging her purse on the hook by the back door. “Did anyone call?”

  She looked so tired, and all at once I didn’t feel like celebrating anymore. I remembered how stressed and sad she was the day before, and how we’d promised to help her. Suddenly, I felt ashamed. I could tell by the way Darby and Delaney slumped in their seats that they felt the same way.

  Lily noticed, too. Those wavy lines reappeared on her forehead. “Dawn?” she said, looking right at me.

  Just because I like to take charge, I’m also the one people turn to when the others go silent. That’s the part I don’t like about being the eldest triplet.

  I picked up the list of venues — the one we’d just taken turns hugging and dancing around with — and handed it to her. “I’m sorry, Lily,” I said. “They called back, but none of them can do the wedding.”

  She took the paper from my hands and stared at it. “Oh,” she said. All that tightness and tension that had been in her face the day before came back. Her shoulders hunched and she plunked down on a nearby stool with a sigh. It was like watching a flower wilt. I felt like a scoundrel.

  “I’m sorry, Lily!” Darby said.

  Lily seemed startled. “Girls, no. Please don’t apologize. You did me a big favor today. It’s not your fault that the news is all bad.” Then she gave us all hugs and went into her room.

  The three of us trudged up the stairs to the Triangular Office.

  “Man, I feel lousy,” I said. “Like a real rat.”

  “A weasel,” Darby said.

  “A lowly slug,” Delaney said.

  The three of us flopped on our beds and didn’t say another word. We could hear Lily and Mom talking downstairs. A little while later, the doorbell rang and we could hear the shrill, chickenlike sounds of Mrs. Caldwell talking.

  It was the most upside-down and inside-out day ever. None of us knew how to feel. We didn’t want Lily to marry Burton, but we didn’t want her to be unhappy and stressed either. I considered telling her about the Bluebonnet House and how she could probably book the wedding there if she explained that she wouldn’t be inviting half the town
or including any four-legged guests — only I didn’t know if that would make me feel better or worse, or if that was truly the best thing for Lily or not.

  Before I could decide, Mom called us down to dinner.

  Mrs. Caldwell was still squawking. “Austin is only fifty miles away, after all. And Fredericksburg and Marble Falls are even closer,” she was saying. “People don’t mind a short drive, especially for something this important.”

  “But it’s high season right now,” Mom said. “Most places have probably been booked way in advance.”

  Lily was staring out the dining room window toward the hill behind our house. Her face looked all pulled-down and sad. All that shame and regret was building to a bursting point inside me, and I was just about to open my mouth and confess when Lily whirled around.

  “I know what to do,” she said. Her eyes were all shiny and determined.

  Mom and Mrs. Caldwell stopped jabbering. “What?” Mom asked.

  “We should have it here.” Lily spread out her arms.

  Mrs. Caldwell shook her head. “Goodness, no. This place simply isn’t large enough. You can’t fit two hundred people here.”

  “We can do it if we cut down on guests,” Lily said. “It’s that or push back the wedding until Christmas break — or next summer.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t have that,” Mrs. Caldwell said. “Burton is moving this fall.”

  Lily looked at Mom, who now had wavy forehead lines of her own. “Please? Can’t we have it here? We’ll keep it small and simple, I promise.” She nodded at the three of us. “And you guys will help. Right?”

  Darby, Delaney, and I looked at each other. In our telepathic triplet way, I knew they felt the same way I did: totally thwarted but relieved to see light in Lily’s eyes again. And unable to say no to her.

  “Sure,” we said at the same time.

  “Well, then. I guess that settles it,” Mom said. “The wedding is back on.”

  The next day was the start of a Dad weekend, and since he always keeps us busy with stuff, we didn’t have much time to plot and plan. It was constantly on my mind, though. As we watched a movie about an invasion of buglike aliens, I kept thinking that the upside to extraterrestrials taking over Earth would be that Lily would probably have to call off the wedding. As we took turns getting rides with Dad on the Vespa, I kept picturing Lily hopping on the scooter and being driven far away — so far that by the time she made her way back to Johnson City, it would be too late for the wedding. And when he took us out for ice cream, and I saw a girl and guy about Lily’s age holding hands, I imagined Lily running into Alex at the ice-cream shop and falling in love with him all over again.

  “Okay. What’s up with you three?” Daddy said as we sat in the booth at the ice-cream parlor. “I’ve never seen you girls so quiet.”

  The three of us looked at each other. No one wanted to answer.

  “Dawn?” Daddy said, looking right at her.

  She checked my eyes and Delaney’s to make sure it was all right to talk and said, “We don’t want Lily to get married.”

  “I see.” Dad sat back against the red vinyl booth. “Why not?”

  “Because she’s going to move away!” Dawn said, pushing aside her ice cream as if in protest.

  Dad nodded. “I don’t like that either,” he said. “But it happens a lot when you marry someone. It’s how I ended up in Johnson City.”

  That was true. Our house has been in our mom’s family for generations — she grew up there and so did her mom and so did her mother. Daddy was what Mom called a “city boy” she met when she went to UT. When he asked her to marry him, she made it clear that she wanted to raise her kids on the family homestead. He agreed and moved out here with her.

  “Also, we don’t like how stressed out Lily is over the wedding,” I said.

  Again, Daddy nodded. “It’s a lot of work and she doesn’t have a lot of time. Most brides get to feeling overwhelmed by it all. Lily told me you three have been helping her out. That makes me proud.”

  “Except we hate Burton!” Delaney said.

  Daddy looked surprised. But, then, so did Dawn and I. We weren’t prepared for her to blurt out the truth.

  “You hate him?” Daddy’s eyebrows lifted so high, they disappeared under the baseball cap he likes to wear to hide his bald spot.

  Dawn and I shifted guiltily in the booth, and the red vinyl made loud, embarrassing noises.

  “Yes,” Delaney said. “He’s boring and nervous and hates the outdoors and never holds Lily’s hand or takes her to get pie. I don’t like his mom. I don’t like his presents. And I hate his squinty armadillo face!”

  “Wow,” Daddy mumbled.

  Dawn and I slumped down in our seats. But that was hard to do secretly because of the big flatulent sounds it made. That Delaney and her big mouth! Now Daddy would lecture us for the whole weekend and tell Mom when he dropped us off so that she could pick up where he left off.

  “Is that how you feel, too?” Daddy asked me and Dawn.

  We nodded. There was no use denying it. We told him that we didn’t exactly hate him, we just hated that he was taking Lily away from us, and we thought he was all wrong for her.

  “You know how when the president wants to give someone an important job in the administration, they hold a big meeting and ask that person lots of questions? And then, if they don’t like the answers they hear, they can vote no and the president has to find someone else for the job?” I asked.

  “You mean the Senate confirmation hearings?” Daddy asked.

  “Yeah. Those. Well, how come we can’t have that for the job of Lily’s husband? How come we can’t sit him down and ask him lots of questions?”

  I thought maybe Daddy would laugh at me, but he didn’t. He sat forward and looked interested. “What would you ask him?” he said.

  Dawn, Delaney, and I started suggesting all kinds of questions, like … What would he do if Lily were sad? What if Lily wanted to plant flowers around their house? What if she wanted to visit her family? What if she wanted a pet rabbit — or ten? Would he make sure she smiled and laughed every day? Would he give her thoughtful birthday presents? Would he keep her out of harm’s way?

  The whole time, Daddy listened quietly. Then, when we ran out of questions to suggest, he said, “All right. Let’s say you sat him down at the booth here, and you asked him all of those things. Let’s say he promised to do everything he could to keep Lily happy and safe. Let’s say he agreed to take care of her, with a nice house, and any flowers or pets she wants, and as many visits to her family as she wants. And say he gave his word that he would consult with all of us before buying Lily a gift. Would you like him then?”

  Again we went all fidgety. And again the vinyl seat made loud brrrap! noises.

  “I don’t know,” Dawn said eventually. “I think he’d still be all wrong.”

  Delaney and I nodded. That’s how we felt, too.

  “Okay, then, let’s say we put Lily on the stand,” Daddy said. “I mean, it would only be fair, right? What should we ask her?”

  For a long time, none of us answered him. We just shrugged and brrrapped and twirled our ice-cream spoons. It was fair, but we didn’t like the idea of Lily being interrogated.

  “We should ask her —” I stopped, unsure if I really wanted to say it aloud. Then I decided to just go ahead and do it. “We should ask her if she’s still in love with Alex.”

  Everyone fell silent again. Even the vinyl didn’t make any noise. It was the most glum I’d ever felt while eating a hot fudge sundae.

  After a while, Daddy took off his cap, and rubbed his forehead, and put his cap back on. Then he let out a long sigh and said, “You know what? You girls are right. Marriage shouldn’t be entered into without lots and lots of thought.”

  His eyes looked sad as he said this, and I had a big urge to hug him. It made me wonder if he was talking about his and Mom’s marriage or Lily’s — or both.

  “Plus, I thi
nk you’re right about something else,” he said.

  “What?” we all asked.

  “Burton does sort of look like an armadillo.”

  We laughed. Then the three of us took turns giving him hugs.

  On Monday, we were back at Mom’s doing chores. Lots of chores. More chores than we’d ever done before. And since Lily was busy getting the big white dress altered to fit, it all came down to us triplets.

  I think Mom was a little freaked at the thought of hosting a wedding there. I totally understand that, but I didn’t see why we had to clean places that the wedding guests would never see. Like the pantry. And the hall closet. And the laundry room. I ask you, what kind of tomfool would wash his clothes at a wedding?

  Poor Quincy kept running from room to room, trying to find a quiet spot where he could nap. Eventually, he whined to go outside and crawled into his kennel on the porch.

  At one point, Mom asked us to load the dishes in the dishwasher while she got out a ladder and cleaned the light fixtures in the living room. We were doing fine until we realized we were out of dishwasher detergent. Darby suggested using the liquid soap Mom used to wash dishes by hand, so we squirted a bunch in the tray and started the machine.

  We then went outside to take a break and check on poor Quincy. When Delaney went back in to get him a treat, we heard her scream. Darby and I ran inside and found that the kitchen was full of bubbles, piles of them, almost as tall as we were.

  “Turn off the dishwasher!” Delaney shouted. Only, we couldn’t even see the dishwasher. So we had to dive into the bubbles and feel around for the OFF switch. It was tough because the floor was all slippery, but eventually someone hit the right button and it stopped. That’s when we heard Mom’s surprised yelp.

  Boy, was she mad. She made us go up to the Triangular Office to change clothes and clean our room — although we couldn’t imagine how any of the wedding guests would end up in there.

  “I feel like Cinderella,” I said, scanning the mess around us.

  “I feel like Rapunzel,” Darby said, staring out the window over the porch. Sunshine lit up the foamy bubbles that still clung to her braids.