Destiny Lingers (15 page)

“There’s got to be more than a dozen roses in there,” says Hope.

The bloodred buds sit in silent preparation of their blossoming. These beautiful roses, however many, are sure to be a divine joy for the one so beloved as to receive them. Sadly, we all know, they are not for me.

“Yeah, looks like about two dozen.” Kat circles the table, scrutinizing the bouquet with a frown on her face. “Is there a card anywhere?”

“One, two, three …” Hope counts. “Yeah, at least two dozen. They only come by the dozen, right?”

“Or half dozen,” I interject, remembering the six little pink roses Garrett slipped from behind his back as my first-date surprise. Six roses on the first date to me implied there would one day be more to come. Those six droopy baby-pink roses, sitting atop their short stems, meant the world to me. They made my Garrett a rich man in my young eyes. He told me that a half a dozen roses were worth more than a dozen.

“They’re cheaper by the dozen,” he explained.

And I actually believed him.

In one fleeting moment, this bunch of blooming red flowers has told the entire story. Garrett has made me feel cheaper by the dozens of sweet-smelling roses sitting right up here under my nose, sitting right up here in my face, standing here in all their blazing red glory.

Just like that red hair in our
bed.

Seething and becoming overwhelmed with nausea, I make a fast move for the door, but Kat jumps in my path before I can reach the knob, blocking my exit.

“You can’t chicken out on us now, girl.” The words sear deep into my soul. “We’ve come too far to turn back now.”

“But Kat, what if we get caught?” I spurt, fighting back tears. “What if he walks in here right now and catches us?”

“So what if he does?” Kat demands in a stern, urgent tone. “We just walked in here and caught
him
, didn’t we?”

My stomach is in knots. I can’t breathe. My eyes are stinging. A lump grows in my throat. I feel a heaviness overcome my chest. My heart remains shattered.

“Oh, my God,” Hope whispers from across the room. She is looking through the double French doors leading to the suite’s master bedroom. She stands there, staring, mouth open, eyes wide, hands still gripping the brass French doorknobs. “Y’all better come see this,” she says, leaving the double doors to slowly swing open on their own, revealing a dream, a truth, and a nightmare, all at the same time.

Kat and I slowly and cautiously walk over to join Hope at the threshold of my husband’s reserved bedroom. There, strewn gently across the king-sized bed, already turned back for the night, are at least another two dozen worth of ruby red rose petals. Each one thoughtfully, carefully, artistically, and most lovingly sprinkled across the stark white Egyptian sheets. I do not know the count, but I do know that this is the second time I have seen red in my husband’s bed.

“Here’s the card.” Kat walks over to the bedside table, where a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne sits chilling in a silver ice bucket. Next to it stands two long-stemmed fluted crystal champagne glasses. They each have fancy little doilies tied to their bottoms.

Oh, how the Ritz thinks of everyt
hing.

Kat snaps up the card, nestled between two bedtime Godiva chocolates wrapped in gold tinsel, and reads the note.

“
Welcome to my world, my love
.” Kat rolls her eyes in disgust and looks up at me. Shaking her head, she takes a long, deep breath and continues reading. “
Have this on when I get home, and in my rose bed we shall roam
. Oh, give me a fuckin’ break,” Kat spits. “That’s disgusting!”

I snatch the note from Kat and stare down at its loopy little letters.

“That’s not even his handwriting,” I sneer.

“He must be talking about this.” Hope points at something on the opposite side of Garrett’s rose-petaled bed. It lies there amid the scattered flowers, appearing silky and shiny in the soft, warm light of the Oriental bedside lamps.

It is a lovely piece of lingerie—a sexy little teddy of a very fine silk—part of Garrett’s special party planning. This spicy little number is a distinct periwinkle blue, a color Garrett and I share—one color we, together, know all too well.

It was the color we chose for our wedding.

Chapter
Nineteen

“W
hat the hell is periwinkle blue?”

I remember the incredulous look on Garrett’s face when I first suggested the color three years ago as a possibility for our wedding.

“And why do we need a color anyway?” He scrunched his face into a scowl and turned back to his televised football game.

Garrett seemed so agitated with the whole idea of a big wedding.

“Because it’s tradition, honey. It’s what people do.” I looked for the scowl to melt. It only tightened.

“I don’t care,” he barked, his cold eyes never leaving the football game.

“How could you say that?” I was crushed.

“Say what?” Garrett shook some peanuts in the palm of his hand, popped a few into his mouth, and then reached for his beer.

“That you don’t care.” Hurt and angry, I started to well up. “It’s our wedding, Garrett! Everything’s important! And you
don’t
care
?”

“Geez, can’t I watch the game?” Garrett whined.

Furious, I ran into our bedroom, slammed the door, flung myself across the bed, and bawled like a baby. Garrett finally came in and apologized. We made love all night—mad, passionate make-up love—and by dawn had agreed on periwinkle blue.

It was the first big fight we’d ever had. I knew he didn’t know any better. He was probably more upset over Mother’s sudden intrusion into our wedding plans than anything else. Just a year earlier, my parents had stopped speaking to us. They had vowed that they’d have nothing to do with our union or our wedding. They hated Garrett for no apparent reason, hated the fact they had no control over either of us, hated the fact that we were living together “in sin” for a year without being married, and
now
they hated the fact that we were getting married. We couldn’t win.

It was way too much drama and mostly from Mother, who was finally forced against the wall by a call from my aunt Edna, her best friend from college. From her poolside mansion in Baldwin Hills, California, an area known as the black Beverly Hills, Aunt Edna shot from the hip and somehow managed to speak some sense into my stubborn mother. I truly appreciated her for that and for every other time she had done something similar to help Mother and me soothe our difficult relationship.

Free-spirited and blessed with a hilarious sense of humor, Aunt Edna was very much unlike Mother. She was a spunky woman of small dimensions, who laughed a lot, cursed a lot, and dressed in cool, hip, bell-bottomed jeans and big brass hip-hugging belts. She didn’t care what people thought about her or her social status in life, although she happened to be married to a prominent and wealthy Los Angeles surgeon. She swore she hated socializing with phony people. She must have made a huge exception, befriending my mother.

One day, after talking with me for an hour on the phone, Aunt Edna called Mother and calmly yet firmly informed her that she’d better get with the program and quick. She went on to explain that whether she and Daddy liked it or not, Garrett and I were getting married. She even tipped her off that we had already started making wedding plans without her. And that was true. We had scraped up enough money to reserve Columbia University’s Little Chapel for our big day. Aunt Edna told my folks that they had every right to like or dislike whomever they wanted, but the fact still remained that their only daughter was about to marry Garrett, whether they liked
that
or not. She warned them that they could keep their heels stuck in the ground and their noses stuck in the air if they wanted to, or they could swallow their pride and support us like a real family should. But whatever they decided to do, she further warned, they’d have to live with that decision for the rest of their lives.

That advice apparently worked, as it always did when Aunt Edna got going. She knew just how to push Mother’s buttons, and she knew my father would obediently follow suit in hopes of avoiding any kind of conflict with his temperamental and demanding wife. I am sure that Aunt Edna’s call got Mother thinking about the ramifications of her noncompliance; mainly, that everyone in our small southern community would be whispering behind her back, wondering why in the world Garrett and I eloped up North. It just wouldn’t look right. It would appear as if something was gravely wrong with
her
. Plus, knowing Mother, she realized that by not giving a proper southern wedding to her only daughter, she’d be missing out on one of the most important social and political occasions of a lifetime. And everyone knows Mother loves a good social and political occasion.

So just as we were about to put the down payment on Columbia’s Little Chapel for our intimate candlelight wedding, with only a handful of very close friends and professors, my folks came through—and with a vengeance, as I found out when I flew home for a weekend of wedding planning with Mother.

By the end of it, there were eight bridesmaids, eight groomsmen, and an invitation list of more than a thousand guests and dignitaries. The long list included presidents of prestigious colleges; politicians; the great people’s poet, Dr. Maya Angelou; and the town’s mayor and the governor of North Carolina. It was quite the affair. I barely knew a soul on that list.

This humongous wedding was sure to be the talk of the town, maybe the nation, as folks across the country were into lavish fantasy weddings after Princess Diana had just floated down those cathedral steps in the longest train any of us had ever seen on TV, much less in real life. Glued to the international news, people all across America and the rest of the Free World dreamed of the “perfect wedding.” My mother was determined to throw one.

“Oh, they are going to be talking about this one for years!” she gushed one day over her morning coffee and her forever-growing invitation list. “It’s is going to be the talk of the town, I tell you.”

Mother was dressed in a flowing lavender caftan, her thick black hair tied up on top of her head and wrapped inside an elaborate silk scarf, making her look like a bold African queen. Sitting at her throne at the end of the family breakfast table, she was using a no. 2 pencil to modify my wedding registry list.

“I marked off those silly pottery plates you listed here,” she said as she struck another line through the word “pottery.” “I listed a beautiful set of china for you instead—Wedgewood. It goes with everything.”

“It doesn’t go with burgers, Mother.” It was too early in the morning for the you-are-a-lady-and-don’t-forget-it speech. “Garrett and I don’t need china. We like pottery. You know, earthy stuff.”

Mother jerked her head up, staring me down with dogged disdain. She pushed down the sides of her mouth into a deep frown, as if something smelled bad.

“Well, then eat off the ground, for God’s sake!” she snapped. I could hear her mumbling something about us being a couple of heathens as she shook her head, pursed her lips, and returned to slaughtering my registry.

“Mother,” I pleaded, “please don’t turn this into a circus. Garrett and I envisioned a small, intimate wedding with just a few close people we love and lots of candlelight and bunches of roses.” I could feel myself float out of my body on my bubble of a dream—until Mother popped it.

“Well, that’s ridiculous.” She looked up from my list. “You come from a prominent family, remember. Your father is a doctor. We are not a bunch of hippies, for goodness’ sake.”

Had Mother heard one thing I’d just said? Did she even care? Did it always have to be about her? How did I suddenly become so insignificant in my own wedding?

“No, Mother,
this
is ridiculous,” I proceeded with caution as I noticed that “you’d-better-watch-yo’-step” look come across her face. “It’s
my
wedding, Mother, and you don’t even acknowledge that. It’s
my
day, you know.” I prayed she wouldn’t shoot off like a ballistic missile.

“Look, I am doing this for you.” She whipped off her reading glasses, scolding me with one of the stems. “Your father and I worked too hard around here and doled out too much charity money not to have this whole damn town come out and support you.”

Clearly, this was no longer about Garrett and me.

“But they don’t have to give us china, Mother; that’s all I’m saying. We don’t need china.”

“Well, what will you serve your guests on when you have dinner parties and such?” She looked at me like I was crazy. “Now look, you have eaten on china from birth. I will not even consider your not having a complete and decent set for your wedding.” She snatched a frilly floral hanky out of her watchband, blew on her reading glasses, and started wiping the lenses clean.

“Trust me; you’ll need a touch of class, living with that beast you’re marrying. I bet he’s the one talking about ‘pottery.’” She popped her glasses back on top of her nose and peered over the rims at me. “Don’t you let that man make you less of yourself, now. You hear me?”

“Mother, please …”

“I’m serious. Don’t you let that man turn you into a heathen and take away all your father and I have taught and given you. We fought for that. Sacrificed everything. You are
pedigreed—of a certain class—
and don’t you forget it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I bowed my head in my usual obedience.

“Oh!” Mother snapped her manicured fingers into the air. “I thought about the wedding march too. ‘Trumpet Voluntary’ by Purcell. It was the same one Princess Diana used for her wedding. Oh, you will
love
it,” she gushed. “The piece is so full of grandeur—simple but elegant.” Lost in the moment, Mother circled her hand around in the air like a musical conductor. Then, with a squint of her nose, she went back to my registry.

“China, a thousand people, and, now Princess Di’s wedding march? Mother!” I wailed. She was barreling out of control. “What are you doing?”

“I am giving you the gift of a lifetime, madame.” She glared across the table. “And you will shut up and appreciate it, and put on a good face for this family as you go ahead and marry that man you know your father and I do not approve of! It might as well be a good show.”

“A good show?” I couldn’t believe the coldness of her remarks. This is not what a mother is supposed to say about the best day of your life. “It’s not about you, Mother,” I said sadly. Her words hurt beyond belief. Was this beast in a caftan really my mother? I sat there staring at what I swore were two horns growing out of the top of her head.

“Not about me, you say?” she scoffed. “Not about me? Oh, yes it is! Ha! When you come home crying to me when he screws this thing up, I bet you it’ll be about me then, won’t it!”

“Excuse me,” I said as I lifted myself from the table. I knew there was no need to reason with her. Mother was on a wedding-day mission—her own—and no one was going to stop her, not even the bride.

“You didn’t eat anything,” Mother said.

“Not hungry,” I replied. I headed back to the safety of my childhood room, where I was staying for this “wonderful weekend of wedding planning.” I suddenly had a rushing feeling that no place in this house was safe. I thanked God again and again for allowing me to forge a new family for myself and to move on with my life. It was the most important thing in the world to me. I survived that weekend with my mother just out of knowing that finally my family life was going to change and for the better.

“I tell you what …” Mother’s suddenly cheery voice stopped me in my tracks. I slowly turned to face the monster.

“How about I list both the china
and
those pottery plates you like. You can use one for your burgers or whatever and the china for special occasions.” She sat there so confident and satisfied and pleased with herself. Even though I thought this too was a bit much, I could not take such glorious elation from Mother at that moment. More important, I needed peace.

“Not too much, you sure?”

“Oh no, no, dear. Not too much at all.” She smiled her reassurance. “We’ve invited a thousand people, for God’s sake!” She chuckled. “You can surely have two dinner sets.” She settled back in her chair with the satisfaction of a fat cat. Periwinkle blue was one of only a couple of ideas that Garrett and I suggested that actually made it into our wedding. It didn’t matter what we felt, as long as Mother was happy. Our wedding was a huge political and social success for her. Daddy, naturally and obediently, agreed, although he was so drunk when he walked me down the aisle that he almost danced a jig. I’m not sure he even remembers it. I know he was drinking to forget I was marrying Garrett—and who knows what else.

Old Miss Coon directed the wedding. Folks say it was the only one in town that year that started on time. In fact, we had to beg Miss Coon not to start the nuptials ten minutes early. God knows I needed that time.

“There’s a lot of fancy white folks sitting out there,” she whispered to the wedding party as we waited in the church vestibule. “We can’t start this wedding on CP time!”

I remember at that very moment, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Perhaps all jittery brides go through second thoughts just before the wedding, but I recall all of a sudden remembering Chip, the golden boy from my childhood who stole my heart. I felt a deep sadness at the unfairness of it all. I could never have been with Chip, never imagined him waiting for me at the other end of the altar like this, and only because the boy was white and poor.