by Jan Karon
‘That’s the way the future should appear,’ Olivia once said. ‘We’re asked not to fret about the future and to take no thought for tomorrow. We must try to live in the present or we shall miss it entirely.’
Living in the present was exactly what she’d been trying to do. She wanted to totally show up for this incredible time in all their lives. She had two friends who remembered practically nothing about their weddings. ‘I remember starting the walk down the aisle with my dad and I just blanked out,’ Lisa said. ‘When I sort of woke up, Tony and I were dancing. I was, like, are we married, what happened?’
The days were flying by. Everybody was constantly in a buzz, and as much as she loved living together as a family, she would be glad for a quiet house after the wedding, for just being with Dooley. They’d hardly had a minute together except for yesterday in the car driving back from graduation, where she and Cynthia and Olivia had cried as if it were a funeral, which it was in a way, with all the goodbyes and that big chunk of their lives being over.
Now they were looking at the grand opening on Monday and Dooley coming up on his first scrotal hernia procedure, this for a ram lamb, on Tuesday. So it was a lot, but he loved his new practice, which just happened to be unusually busy right now. Already he could not get enough of the life they had been waiting to live.
‘Do not remove your dentures outside your room at any time.’ She felt like a schoolmarm with a ruler.
Harley had lost his teeth again, and she was sick and tired of the let’s-all-hunt-for-Harley’s-teeth routine. Had he left them on top of the woodpile, as he had before? In the barn? In the glove compartment of his truck? Under the bed? On the roof? Maddening. Harley Welch was sixty-seven years old. When would he grow up?
‘Grow up!’ she said. ‘Find your teeth.’
Harley saluted.
‘Wear your teeth.’
Boy howdy, ol’ Dooley would be havin’ hisself a handful.
He could still feel the grinding crush of the national board exam in December, then the long wait to learn whether he passed, whether he knew how to deliver the goods. So, okay, he knew and he had passed, but what it had taken to get here was still compacted in his bones. He stretched, drew in a long breath, and let it go.
He wouldn’t want to be seen lying in a field, even though it was finally actually his field. He hadn’t sprawled in the grass since grade school; bugs were not his favorite creatures on this planet. He hated to admit it, but he was zonked. He had been jumping through hoops for years, and now there were all the hoops to jump through this afternoon and tomorrow and the rest of his life. Okay, he really liked the hoops, all of them, but he needed a break, just a little time somewhere, somehow; he was running on fumes.
But even if they would spring for a honeymoon, they couldn’t leave. No way. The practice was going full tilt and Choo-Choo had just come and he needed to get on speaking terms with this guy, which would take time.
Choo-Choo appeared pretty disgusted with Meadowgate—being restrained from what was clearly a larger world beyond the fence, being hauled to a strange place, and cropping grass that was different from the last grass he cropped. Who knew what went on in the head of a bull? Reading the mind of bovines wasn’t something they taught at State. He would have to feel this guy out and let Choo-Choo do the same with him, and next week he’d be put in with the heifers, two of which should be ready to cycle.
He could see the calves coming onto the land, their herd increasing. Lace would love that, he would love that. And Jack Tyler . . .
He closed his eyes and prayed his dad’s favorite prayer, one he had learned to use pretty often in vet school. That prayer said it all when he had nothing left to say.
The smell of clover, the powdery fragrance of spring air, the gentle gurgle of Shallow Creek . . .
He couldn’t know that his heifers stood bewildered in a group just yards away, eyeing his prone, sleeping body in the meadow grass.
He’d been mighty pleased on Wednesday when Mink Hershell stopped by to comment.
‘Hey, Father, you can quit your day job and just do grass!’
Already poking through the straw. Already making a good show.
‘The worst is behind us,’ he said to Harley and Willie of the entire pre-wedding improvement plan.
‘Right,’ said Harley. ‘It’s jis’ maintenance from here out.’
‘Piece of cake,’ he said.
Willie shook his head in the negative. ‘We gon’ need a hay baler.’ They had refused to listen to his rain predictions, had planted bushels of grass seed without asking his say-so, and had completely taken over the old grain room where he had set up his private office with a busted recliner, a 1978 feed-store wall calendar, and a card table. Not that he needed an office, but still . . .
She was going to Wesley in the farm truck to pick up shipping material for the five paintings. It would take a ton of stuff to make them secure for the trip to California. Thank goodness Cynthia had done this a hundred times and would help her.
She drove past the clinic and looked at the sign they hung at high noon on Monday with everyone clapping and drinking lemonade and Harley ringing an old cowbell. Some came with their dogs on leashes, two showed up with cats in carriers, and there was Homer wearing a bandana and sitting up in a Red Flyer wagon. People had really turned out to congratulate Dr. Dooley, whom they’d known since he was a kid with freckles and a red cowlick shooting up like a geyser.
Painted beneath the dark green silhouettes of a dog, a cat, a sheep, and a goat:
KAVANAGH ANIMAL WELLNESS CLINIC
Dooley Kavanagh, DVM
At a time when so much seemed like a dream, the joy of the grand opening had been wonderfully real. Now it was time for her to be real. What if she couldn’t find a dress? And what if she just wore something old, with new shoes? The whole thing was driving her insane, and everybody else, too.
How stupid to have pursued the ridiculous notion of a hundred-dollar dress while the days blew by like a rocket train. Now she really didn’t have time to search around on the Internet. Nor could she make a desperate call to Beth to borrow her elaborate dress, because Beth, who was her size, had sold it on eBay the day after her derp husband walked out. She remembered Laura’s extreme creation, bought by her dreadful father for nine thousand dollars without the veil—anything, of course, to make up for what he could never, ever make up.
So when she spent those few months modeling for Neiman’s in Atlanta, she had bought a really beautiful white shirt. It was the white shirt she thought every girl would dream of having. She had worn it to work a lot because it looked so smart. When it picked up the tiniest stain or smudge, she removed it with lemon juice and sunshine until it was snow-white again. Then she let it drip-dry in her bathroom the size of a number ten envelope and ironed it as if it were holy vestments. She had always gotten the most compliments on it, and the older it became, the silkier it felt against her skin. She could wear that with her long white breezy skirt with a twine of Seven Sisters and stephanotis at her waist. She would put her hair up in a chignon and dress her hair with just seven of the Seven Sisters.
That would totally work.
And she would save a hundred dollars!
‘Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business—even your own life is not your business. It is also God’s business!’ Frederick Buechner
She transcribed the quote from Beth’s e-mail into the Dooley book. She laughed. A very funny quote from somebody who was always managing the lives of others! ‘I know,’ Beth had said on the phone, ‘but I’m trying to quit.’
She loved her best friend and figured the quote might come in handy at some point.
I have not been able to find any definition for cherish that feels special. It is
really important to me to understand what it is because I love the word and think there’s a rich meaning that has maybe been hidden or at least not much talked about.
Fr Tim says he feels cherish is linked to~ or perhaps best defined by the admonition in Romans 12:10: Outdo one another in showing honor.
Instead of parking at the corncrib after the post office, she drove to the cattle gate where Choo-Choo was standing. He looked mournful, somehow.
BULL IN FIELD
KEEP OUT
She jumped down from the truck and walked over to the gate.
‘Hey,’ she said.
She realized she was pacing the floor as if caged.
She was caged, in a way—by the enormity of everything, including the pressure of finishing Dooley’s present on time. Somehow she needed to let it all go.
Let go and let God.
She had seen that sprayed on a wall of graffiti years ago and had written it inside the cover of her Dooley book. She had seen it hundreds of times when opening the book, so often that she forgot to consider the meaning anymore.
She found her pen and sat in the chair by the window and opened the book in her lap.
I give my wedding dress to you and also the weather on the fourteenth and the entire day and all the people who have worked so hard to make it happen and the people who will be coming. I give you Dooley’s present and his vet practice and Choo-Choo and the girls and all the days of our wonderful life together in this beautiful place.
But most of all, Lord~ most of all~
I give you Jack Tyler.
Dooley stretched and sat up on the side of his narrow bed in the room adjoining what everybody called the glider porch.
If—just if—this was the day, would he be scared? He’d been best man in a couple of weddings where the groom had, on the big morning, immediately puked—not from last night’s partying necessarily, but from fear. Sheer terror.
If this was the day, which it would be in just ten days, he would not throw up. He would not be numb with fear and he would not panic. What would he do?
He thought about it.
He would lie back down.
Oh, right. Given the fact that he was running a busy clinic, developing his herd, and doing his own spreadsheets for at least the first year, he would never again get a chance to lie back down.
She and Cynthia would be having yogurt and granola this morning. Father Tim would be driving to Mitford for his prayer breakfast and Dooley had called at six-thirty to say he was already at the clinic.
Today she would break in the shoes she bought to wear for the Big Knot. Strappy. Sort of a dressy wedge that wouldn’t perforate the turf and cause her to tip over.
She brushed her teeth. Ten days and counting, and absolutely everyone would be coming. Not one single soul had sent or called in a regret except Louella, who they hadn’t really expected since she didn’t leave Hope House anymore. She had never heard of ninety-nine percent attendance, especially with people having to cook or bake and bring something. She loved their guests for pitching in like this.
Cynthia rang the attic at seven to say Father Tim had called from the rose garden at Lord’s Chapel.
‘He says there’ll be buckets of roses on the Seven Sisters.’
Buckets!
Little pails the size of a child’s sand bucket. Not vases as they had planned. Placed in a long row down the table. Yes!
Ten buckets from the co-op, she wrote in her lined notebook. People used these sometimes for chicken feed. Wait. Fifteen buckets. And paint. And what about tablecloths? Why hadn’t she thought of tablecloths before? Perhaps everyone was thinking rustic, barn, oil lanterns, bare wood, no tablecloths. Well, yes, but they needed tablecloths for contrast; naked wooden tables would be lost from view in the barn aisle. Cream tablecloths, then. Five. Wait a minute . . .
She had a policy not to call him at the clinic, though he called her whenever he could. But this was different. She pressed auto dial.
How could this have happened? How could all those brilliant minds overlook something so obvious? What about Lily, who did this stuff for the mayor, for Pete’s sake—what was she thinking?
She had just blamed it all on everybody else, which felt really good for about two minutes.
The real question was, what was she, Lace Harper, thinking? She felt she had sleepwalked through practically everything since pulling out of the driveway in Mitford. She had been a zombie, duh; everybody had been flying around trying to help the bride-to-be, who was, unknown even to herself, totally out of it.
‘Hey,’ said Dooley.
‘Hey. Did you sleep?’
‘Rock city.’
‘When we said five tables pushed together in a long row, we forgot that we lose ten end seatings. Ten! Which means we have to add another table for ten, which makes the two ends of all the tables put together longer than the barn aisle, so somebody will be sticking out from under the shed on both sides.’
There was a stunned silence.
‘Man,’ said Dooley. He didn’t want to ask her this, especially right now, but why couldn’t a simple country wedding be simple?
‘Lace is at the barn shooting pictures of Dooley’s truck for some reason,’ said Cynthia. ‘But yes, this can be private. In case anyone comes into the kitchen, I’m taking the cordless to the library.’
‘We got home late last evening from Hoppy’s meeting in Denver,’ said Olivia. ‘How is she?’
‘Calm as anything till the last couple of days. Bride Hysteria has set in. She just found buckets at an online hardware discounter and was going to paint them blue but remembered the lanterns are red and the roses are pink so that won’t work and there are more tables than the barn shed will cover and she’s working long hours on Dooley’s wedding present, but what that is is an absolute secret. In a nutshell!’
She remembered her own Bride Hysteria, which started weeks before the wedding. And then an hour before the service, conducted by the bishop, the knob fell off her bathroom door and trapped her inside in a derelict bathrobe while two blocks away, the organ played for what Esther Bolick described as ‘an eternity.’
‘I have a wonderful idea,’ said Olivia. ‘But it’s risky.’
Cynthia shut the library door behind her. ‘I love risky.’
‘If it doesn’t work . . . I mean, we could present it in such a way that . . . But here’s what I’m thinking. I was married in a beautiful gown . . .’
‘You were the most gorgeous bride we’d ever seen, you took our breath away.’ Actually, Olivia and Hoppy’s wedding was the magna cum laude of all weddings, celebrating not only a new life together, but life itself, given Olivia’s successful heart transplant.
‘Thank you for that. There was a wonderful slip I wore underneath all that lace and tulle. A waterfall of pearl silk, lined in satin. Tiny straps. Asymmetrical hemline. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but it’s exactly what she’s looking for. She’s five-nine; I was five-eight and just her size, having lost so much weight after surgery. What do you think? Shall we pursue this?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘She’s so earnest and works so hard and heaven knows, time is running out. If she really wants to wear a blouse and skirt, we can’t stop her—she would be beautiful in a flour sack. All we can do is . . .’
‘. . . suggest.’
Olivia laughed. ‘Agreed!’
‘I wore a turquoise suit for our wedding,’ said Cynthia, ‘so I haven’t a scrap to contribute. How shall we proceed?’
‘I remember your lovely suit. It had a silky sheen and wonderful buttons. Here’s what else I’m thinking . . .’
She saw the UPS truck pull into the driveway and zoom around to the front porch.
She beat the delivery person to the door and, with four dogs barking, signed for the package and ran back up t
o the attic and waited until her heart stopped pounding from the round-trip on the stairs.
She didn’t think she could bear to cram another secret into herself; she was stuffed with secrets. But she didn’t want anyone else to see it until she gave it to Dooley ten days from now. She promised herself that she would not keep another secret for a very long time. ‘Don’t tell me!’ she would say. ‘I don’t want to know!’
She tore off the wrapping and tossed it in the recycle basket and ran a palette knife under the tape that secured the lid to the shipping box and looked inside at the two signature pale-blue-almost-aqua boxes, Pantone 1837—and untied the white satin ribbons and lifted the tops and removed the velvet boxes.
She took a deep breath and sat on the side of her bed and opened the hinged top of the first box, and there was the beautiful gold band.
The painting she sold Irene McGraw had translated into something more real than money. She had never before made such a direct connection between her work and what it might afford her materially.
But she mustn’t do this all at once. She was going too fast, she wanted to savor this, it was important.
She placed the box on her pillow and got up and poured a glass of water and took a pill for the pain, then sat again and removed the heavy gold band and held it in her palm for a moment before looking inside at the inscription. Perfect.
She opened the other box and removed a much smaller gold band and looked inside for its own inscription. The engraving was minuscule, but she could read it.
There had been no absolute certainty that this ring would ever be worn. But she had trusted.
She kissed the little ring and held it in her hand until it was warm from her touch.
