Beneath the Night Tree (19 page)

“You don’t seem as excited as I hoped you’d be,” Michael finally said when we were stopped at the intersection. His words in the stillness of the warm car seemed hard, polished. “I thought you wanted this. I thought you wanted to get married.”

“I do! Of course I do!” I couldn’t stand the sudden tension between us, but if I was honest with myself, I could hardly blame him for jumping to the wrong conclusion. I hadn’t exactly been the sort of fawning fiancée new husbands-to-be expected to parade around. And I’d been engaged only an hour. The sparkly patina of white gowns, layer cakes, and marital bliss should have been far from faded.

I was botching my marriage already.

Rotating in my seat to face him full-on, I took an unsteady breath and said, “You just took me by surprise. When you said two months ago that you had a plan, it never crossed my mind that this might be it. I’m still wrapping my head around the idea. I guess I’m shell-shocked.”

“
Shell-shocke
d
? That term hardly has positive connotations.”

“Stunned,” I amended. “Amazed, blown away, astonished.”

“Better,” Michael conceded.

“Mystified, thrilled, ecstatic . . . ,” I continued.

There was no one on the highway but us, and when Michael turned to kiss me, I gave in and let myself forget every doubt. Every worry.

At least for a moment.

* * *

I was grateful that the boys were already in bed when Michael and I got home. He wanted to wake them up with the good news, but I balked at his enthusiastic suggestion, convincing him that Simon and Daniel were likely fast asleep and would resent the interruption of their dreams. In reality, I was quite sure they were both wide-awake and indulging in a few stolen minutes—Simon reading a book under the covers and Daniel driving new Matchbox cars along the stripes of his comforter. But I wasn’t about to admit my suspicions to Michael. I simply wasn’t ready to tell my boys. Not yet.

Grandma was a different story. We didn’t even bother to shrug off our jackets before we hunted her down in the living room to announce our plans. I couldn’t fathom how she had guessed Michael’s intentions, but she seemed to anticipate our news long before I took my hand out of my coat pocket and showed her the shining ring. There was a thin smile on her face, but it was paired with a look of phony surprise that made it impossible for me to tell if her joy at our upcoming wedding was sincere or not. As she turned my hand this way and that, admiring the cut of the square diamond and the slender rope of the delicate band, I decided that she was happy for us. She was just preoccupied by the same questions that rattled around in my head.

How in the world were we going to make this work?

“June?” Grandma asked. She gave my fingers one last squeeze before letting go. “A June wedding will be lovely. That gives us . . . How many months to plan?”

“A little less than eight,” Michael said without pause. “I’ve already called the church and booked three different dates. I figured Julia would like to have a few options.”

I wasn’t able to suppress the stunned look that swept across my features. My mouth was a little O of disbelief, and I had to make a conscious effort to close it. To smile. “You’ve reserved the church?”

“Fellowship Community.” Michael nodded. “I thought you’d want to get married in your own church.”

“I do,” I whispered. “Of course I do.”

Michael grinned, obviously thrilled that he had gotten it right. “And since you can’t take pictures of yourself, I booked a lady in Glendale who is supposed to be the best around. But she’ll only hold all three dates until Monday. We’ll have to make some decisions fast.”

“The best around?” I parroted lamely.

“Well, you’re the best around,” Michael assured me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders for a quick, placating hug. “But like I said, you can’t take pictures of yourself.”

“Sounds like you’ve done a lot of work already,” Grandma said.

“I don’t want Julia to have to stress about every little detail. Between work and school and the kids . . . she’s got a lot on her plate.”

Though it wasn’t in my nature to be suspicious, it seemed to me like Michael’s tone held the smallest twinge of accusation. But before I could speculate about the origins of his resentment, it hit me that Daniel and Simon weren’t the only things I would have to sort out against the backdrop of a new life, a new home. There was also my schooling, my job, and my fledgling photography business. And I hadn’t even begun to consider what my marriage plans would mean for my grandmother.

“Actually,” Michael began, holding me a little tighter, “my mom has taken care of a few more things. . . .”

“Your mom?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s no big deal, really. I just asked her to take a peek at some flower arrangements and put together a few cake ideas.”

“Flowers? Cakes?”

“Yeah.” Michael grinned. “Remember the bouquet I sent you a couple months ago? the one that you got right before I told you I had a plan?”

My mind flashed to the delphiniums, chrysanthemums, and freesia. The roses that were painted to match a morning sun. It was a bouquet that had been handpicked by someone who knew me. Who loved me.

“Your mom picked out those flowers?”

“No, she has someone to take care of everything for her: decorating, hair, arrangements . . . you name it. The lady at the Flower Cart put together that bouquet. Did you like it?”

“It was perfect,” I whispered.

“It was you.” Michael dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I described you to the florist, and that’s what she came up with.”

“Did your mom find someone to do the cake, too?” Grandma asked.

I couldn’t tell if there was a catch in her voice or if I was only imagining it. Years ago, when I was still naive enough to dream about a fairy-tale wedding replete with bridesmaids, birdseed, and a sumptuous buffet, we had delighted in the idea of making our own cakes, a gift of sorts for the people who came to celebrate in our joy. Little ones for every table, Grandma had decided. A different flavor each, with white fondant and flowers from our own garden.

But Michael didn’t know about our distant daydreams. “Lily’s makes amazing cakes,” he said. Like we didn’t already know that. “She’ll do a three-tiered vanilla cake for a very reasonable price. It’s not big, but we can do the rest as sheet cakes.”

“You sure know a lot about wedding planning,” Grandma said kindly.

I pulled out of Michael’s half embrace and spun to face him. “Hang on. How do you know so much about wedding planning? I can’t believe you’re taking an interest in this. I can’t believe you know anything about three-tiered cakes and wedding bouquets.”

“It’s the only thing my mom and I have talked about for weeks,” Michael groaned, flopping down on the couch as if it was exhausting just to discuss the planning process. “I am so glad that it’s finally official and I can turn it all over to you. My mother has been driving me crazy.”

I almost said,
Maybe your mom can just plan our wedding.
But even though my heart was a twisted knot of emotions, I knew that my sourness would be misunderstood. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Michael. I did. And the last thing I wanted to do on the night of our betrothal was ruin his excitement with my whininess.

Everything was just happening so fast.

“Crazy.” I said the word quietly, grounding myself. “I can do crazy.”

“Good, because I’ve had more than my fair share.” Michael reached up and pulled me to sit beside him on the couch.

I was concerned that he would want to engage in more wedding talk, but instead of continuing on about the plans he had made with his mom, he reached for the remote and clicked on the TV. It was as if the room exhaled, as if everyone breathed a sigh of relief that the topic of our nuptials could be shelved for at least the length of the late show. We settled into a somewhat-comfortable silence, until Grandma got up and announced she was going to bed. I could hardly believe she had stayed up as long as she did.

“Congratulations again,” she whispered, giving me one last tender look. Michael’s attention was fixed on the television and she didn’t have to manufacture any emotions for his sake. I felt like I was finally able to gauge her real reaction to my new fiancé’s proposal.

There was a gentle delight in her eyes, a soft contentment that told me in no uncertain terms that she still longed for my happiness. But there was more. In her deep, cream-and-coffee eyes, I read uncertainty, disquiet, even melancholy. And I knew exactly why. Michael’s proposal marked the end of an era. The beginning of a new life that neither of us could quite call into focus no matter how hard we tried to squint at the future.

I was sure that my face mirrored her own.

When Grandma was gone, Michael pulled my head down onto his shoulder and relaxed into the couch. I was sure that he would have gladly fallen asleep there, nestled in the warm embrace of his future bride. But when the late show eventually went off air and an old rerun of a corny sitcom filled the living room with canned laughter, I gave him a little nudge.

“I should get to bed,” I whispered. “And so should you. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“A big day?” Michael asked, blinking at me as if I had indeed woken him.

“The children’s museum?” I reminded him. “Daniel and Simon have been looking forward to it.”

“Oh yeah. It’ll be fun,” Michael said.

“Not if we’re both cranky and groggy.”

“I’m a med student,” he reminded me. “I sometimes get to see the sun rise.”

“Me too, but it’s at the end of a good night’s sleep. That’s something you’re going to have to learn about me: I need a good night’s sleep.”

Michael left reluctantly, drawing me into long kisses that I had to extract myself from with patience and poise. He was so blinded by the promise of never having to say good night again that he seemed to forget we had to say, “I do” before that particular marital perk kicked in.

By the time I finally had him out the door, I was exhausted, and my head felt like it had taken one too many spins on a Tilt-A-Whirl. It was a sick, hungover feeling, though I could hardly blame the few sips of wine I had with dinner for leaving me so nauseous and dizzy.

What, then?

More importantly: What was wrong with me?

This was exactly what I had wanted. What I’d yearned for since almost the first day I laid eyes on the painfully handsome Michael Vermeer. He was an amazing man. A future doctor. The catch of the century with cornflower blue eyes, hair the color of jet, and a heart so kind, so generous, I would be a fool to do anything but dance at the prospect of being his wife.

So why wasn’t I sashaying across the kitchen floor?

Because I hadn’t expected Michael to propose.

Because I was tired.

Because it meant I would have to make a lot of tough decisions.

Because my future husband hadn’t picked out the flowers I loved or asked me if I would like to get my wedding cake from the local bakery or consulted me about who I wanted to be our photographer.

Because his mother planned our wedding while mine was incommunicado.

I had a hundred reasons marshaled like soldiers ready to take the fall. If one was shot down, another rose to stand in the line of fire. I could massacre an army of excuses and still find recruits among the ruins of my secreted thoughts.

The sigh that escaped me was a long, low deflation. I felt emptied in the hush of Michael’s absence, alternately grateful that I was alone and struck by the depth of my loneliness. It seemed strange that I could feel isolated in a house that was bursting at the seams with life, but with everyone in bed and the night so dark around our farmhouse we could have existed in the hidden recesses of a black hole, I might as well have been the only person on the face of the earth.

Instead of going to my room, I slouched in a kitchen chair and loathed myself. And just like it was easy to come up with explanations for why I wasn’t tap-dancing in the wake of Michael’s proposal, it was a cinch to divine a dozen reasons to hate the girl in the mirror. For fighting with Simon. For not giving Michael the reaction he deserved. For nitpicking when I had been handed my dreams on a silver platter. For sending Parker away.

Shoot. I had almost forgotten about him.

My purse was on the table next to me, abandoned there when Michael and I came home hours before. I reached for it and extracted the stack of postcards, minus one. Paging through them with an inordinate amount of care, I chose the giant corncob. It seemed appropriate, a big picture for big news.

But I didn’t know what to write.

So I started with her address, another stab in the dark.

Janice DeSmit

c/o Ben (Benret? Benmet?)

Minneapolis area, Minnesota

USA

And then I traced three simple words:
I’m getting married.

It wasn’t until they were on the paper that I realized I had never said yes.

Normal

Thankfully, I convinced Michael to postpone the news of our happy union until Sunday, after our outing with the boys. Simon and Daniel had been looking forward to the science museum and a trip to the IMAX for weeks, and I wasn’t about to overshadow their excitement with the considerable implications of my engagement to Michael. I wanted them to enjoy one day that was dedicated entirely to them. One day that would allow me to see how we could function as a family.