The Wedding Machine (22 page)

Ray's eyes open wide and she examines herself in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

“A few bald spots.” Sylvia discreetly holds up a hand mirror and shows Ray the two bare places in the back of her head. Her scalp looks as pale as can be with all of that black hair around it.

Ray shakes her head in disbelief. “Put that away,” she says to Sylvia, who puts it down immediately and begins resuming the cut.

Ray feels the familiar flash of heat coming on. This one starts in the top of her head where Sylvia is tugging and clipping, and it works its way down to the pit of her stomach. How could she have missed this?

“Need some water?” Sylvia says.

Ray nods her head.

Sylvia pulls a water bottle out of the fridge near her station and when she hands it to Ray she whispers, “It's perfectly normal at our age.” Then she nods toward the manicure station and says, “My sister Trudi has them, and so did our daddy. It tends to run in the family. Was your daddy bald?”

“Oh,” Ray says. “He died when I was very young, so I don't know.”

“Well,” Sylvia says as she teases a large clump of hair on top and says, “It's easy to cover up for now with the rest of your hair and a little hairspray, but I can find out what Trudi does about hers. She takes some kind of women's Rogaine or something. I'll let you know next week.”

“Thank you, Sylvia,” Ray says. She puts her fingers up to the back of her head and feels her scalp. Sylvia pulls Ray's hand gently away and says, “Don't give it another thought. I'll cover it up good for tonight.”

This menopause is a nightmare
, Ray thinks. She's got hair popping up in places she doesn't want it to, and she's losing it in places she desperately needs it. It's like her body is against her. Snuffing out her womanhood before she has time to blink.

With a new hairdo and a fresh manicure, Ray and Carson race home. Ray changes into her new outfit, comes down the stairs, and vamps for her boys. “Here it is.”

The outfit is so unlike her, but Cousin Willy never seems to have an opinion about clothes and he says in earnest, “It's nice. Real nice.”

“And different,” Justin adds. “All that brown and orange reminds me of camouflage.”

Ray smiles and shakes her head. “Camouflage? Is hunting all you ever think about?”

“Nope,” he says as Cousin Willy hands him a stick of summer sausage to slice. “I think about fishing too.”

She flaps her hands at them.

“You've got to come fishing with us sometime, Ray,” Cousin Willy says. “We'll blindfold you on the way, of course.”

Justin laughs. Ray doesn't know if Willy is kidding or not, and she can tell by the funny way Justin is tilting his head that he doesn't know either.

Miss C. is in the backyard greeting everyone with a cone-shaped birthday hat and several birthday blowers in her concrete basket. She looks like a beauty pageant contestant with a red sash tied across one shoulder and down to the opposite hip that reads, “Ray's Big Day!”

“Hey, hey!” Kitty B. says as she and LeMar come through the back deck and set the birthday cake on the counter. She's made Ray's favorite—her seven-layer coconut cake—and she's also made a peanut butter pie and a bowl of banana pudding.

“Good gracious, Kitty B.,” Cousin Willy says. “That all looks so good!”

LeMar nods and pats his head with a handkerchief.

“How are you feeling?” Ray asks him.

“Not too bad,” he says as he shakes Willy's and Justin's hands.

Kitty B. whispers to Ray, “The MRI was clear again. Surprise, surprise.”

Then Sis comes right through the kitchen door with her seven-layer dip and chips. “Great outfit, Ray.”

Ray spins around for the gals. “Can I can pull it off?”

“Uh-huh,” Kitty B. says. “Where did you get it?”

“Carson got it for me today in Charleston,” she says, and just then her son and daughter-in-law come down the stairs and into the kitchen looking like the most handsome couple you ever saw.

William sports olive pants and a white oxford shirt with his initials on the chest pocket, and Carson is in fancy blue jeans and a silky brown poncho with lots of tassels. She's got on these pointed high heels that will sink right into the soft ground as soon as she steps foot in the backyard. Now Ray envisions Carson with her heel stuck in the mud in the barbeque buffet line. She hopes she won't sprain her ankle, but she doesn't feel like it's her place to tell her to change shoes.

“Well, who do we have here?” Kitty B. says as she runs to embrace them.

“Don't y'all look wonderful,” Sis says, following behind her.

“Indeed,” LeMar says, putting his hanky back in his pocket and shaking William's hand.

Cousin Willy leads everyone through the deck and into the backyard to the beverage table, where he's got cans of beer in barrels and cups of iced tea so sweet it will curl your hair.

When the pack is outside chatting, Rev. Capers shows up with a nice bottle of wine. Willy has hired his favorite bluegrass band, Three-Legged Pig, from Columbia and they've set up on a little stage he built by the edge of the creek. Kitty B. has brought her dogs, and Justin lets Tuxedo out, and they sniff around the yard together. Then Trudi and Angus show up, and Sylvia and her boyfriend Bubber, and R.L. and Mayor Whaley and Opal Dowdy and Cricket and Tommy and the rest of the friends and family on the list.

When everyone's gathered together and they're just finishing the blessing, Cousin Willy squeezes her hand. “Will you looky here, Ray?” He nods in the direction of the driveway, where Priscilla and Donovan smile at her behind the white picket fence.

Priscilla waves both arms over her head. “Hi, Mama!”

“Oh, what a surprise!” Ray grabs her cheeks and runs toward them. “When did you get here, sweetheart?”

Priscilla kisses Ray on the cheek, grabs the tips of her elbows. “We just flew in.”

Ray squeezes her daughter tightly and then pats Donovan on the back. “Well, come on in, come on in and get yourself a beer.”

“Mama, you look fabulous,” Priscilla says as Cousin Willy comes over and hugs her tight before giving Donovan a firm handshake.

“Happy birthday, Mrs. Montgomery,” Donovan says. His cheeks are rosy and he's just adorable. He's so tailored and clean-cut that it's hard for Ray to imagine he's a Democrat. Anyway, he is just precious in his barn jacket and khaki pants and penny loafers. He's got this short hair parted on the side and these big green eyes with long dark lashes and furry eyebrows.

“Howdy, Sis,” William says with Carson standing right behind him.

“One afternoon back in Jasper, and he's already talking like a country boy,” Carson jokes. “Better look out, Donovan.”

William gives his sister a tight squeeze and says, “Let's dance,” and Ray watches as he leads her out to the dance floor and spins her around to the twang of the banjo.

Maybe this trip back home will rekindle William's love for the place where he grew up. Where the air is clear and the light is bright. Where southern hospitality thrives and folks pour all they've got into their social occasions, even such an inconsequential one as her turning fifty-five. It will be such a shame if neither of her children ever moves back home. Makes her wonder if she ever should have sent them off to those fancy, overpriced out-of-state colleges in the first place.

After everyone eats, LeMar takes the microphone from the band and sings “Happy Birthday” to Ray. Then Kitty B. brings out the coconut cake with sparkler candles. After Ray opens what she assumes is the last present, Willy brings out a huge box wrapped in coral and pink stripes with a big white bow.

The band stops and everyone gathers around as Ray gently tears open the paper. At the edge of the box she sees the gray and pointed tip of an antler, and she shrieks and jumps into Justin's arms. Willy opens it the rest of the way, and Ray sees it is the enormous head of a buck mounted on a white-striped wooden panel with a little plaque below his head.

First Deer of the Season
Ray Jones Montgomery
August 15, 2005

Ray doesn't know whether to scowl or weep, though everyone around her claps and cheers.

“Thought we could put it up at the beach house,” Willy says.

“Mmm,” Ray says. “We'll see about that.”

“You won it fair and square, Aunt Ray,” Justin says. “You got the first one of the season with the grill of your pretty green car.”

Ray laughs as the band starts back up and the guests begin to dance again.

Now no outdoor party is complete—at least in the men's eyes—without some sort of fire that everyone sits around. So Willy and Justin light a small bonfire that they built earlier in the day. Ray and the gals sit around it in the lawn furniture and start telling old stories about the watermelons and the dances and jumping off the old Macon Bridge into the Edisto River.

Capers sits by Sis and chats awhile with her, and just when Kitty B. offers to give her a lift home, he says, “I'll walk you home, Sis.”

Sis's eyes glisten in the fire. “Okay,” she says.

“All right.” Kitty B. tries to keep her cool as Rhetta nips at her ankle. “That's a fine idea!”

As the folks Ray's age begin to say their good-byes, Carson and William amble out on the dock with Donovan and Priscilla, where Justin has set up the Chiminea and started their own fire. Cricket and Tommy join them, and so do Marshall and Katie Rae.

Like grade school children, they move their flashlights around the creek in search of the alligator. The boys chuckle and the girls shriek with fear and delight as the light hits an old stump on the edge of the marsh. Ray loves the sound of their banter as it wafts over the creek and back toward the house.

That night as Ray turns on the television and waits for Cousin Willy to give her a turn in the bathroom, she comes across J.K. Neely on the television as she flips through the channels.

“Look!” she calls to Willy. “It's Poop 2!”

Willy peers around the corner with the toothbrush in his mouth.

“Same old imbecile,” he says, and they both watch Poop 2 climb up in some kind of enormous slingshot where he will be pulled back and launched over some muddy lake in Tennessee.

They gawk at him as his cohorts snap the sling and his body is hurled out over the water. He flails his arms and legs in midair for several seconds until he does a belly flop into the lake. Ray is thankful, oh so thankful, that he is launched out of Priscilla's life for good.

Now she pictures the gardenias whose buds are just beginning to form secretly behind the shed as she peers out of the bedroom window and listens to her children chuckling around the bonfires with their significant others. She thinks of Capers walking Sis on home, and she hopes Vangie Dreggs tootled by in her golf cart earlier in the evening as the sound of the bluegrass band and the rising voices surely sent her the message.