The Wedding Machine (31 page)

“Not today, I can't,” he says. “Call them and tell them I'm under the weather.”

Kitty B. carefully holds the pieces of glass in her wide hands. “No,” she says. “You were too ill to meet them a few weeks ago, and I'm not going to tell them that again.”

“What are you saying?” he asks. “Are you saying I'm making this up?”

Then he reaches for the back of his neck and rubs it. “I need some ibuprofen or I'm going to pass out from the pain.”

Kitty B. walks toward the doorway. She's not going to wait on him hand and foot today. “I'm sure there's some in your medicine cabinet. Now I'm going down to check on the turkey.”

As she sets the fine china and silver on the table, she hears him grumbling.

“We're all out,” he finally hollers and she wants to say,
I'm not
leaving to go get some now. You can go.

But she knows he won't go on his own. LeMar rarely drives. He was never very good at it, and since he's been home the last few years, he asks her to chauffeur him everywhere.

So she calls their neighbor, Mr. Tidemann, the ones who raises the goats, and he meets her on the dirt road between their homes with an unlabeled bottle of aspirin that looks like it could be twenty years old.

Before long the Benningtons arrive in their minivan with Katie Rae and Marshall in tow. Shawna has made some kind of greenish marshmallow concoction that she calls Watergate salad, and she's also made some macaroni and cheese with crushed potato chips sprinkled on top.

“Where's Daddy?” Katie Rae says as Kitty B. greets them on the porch. She's set up a little drink station against the porch railing with a little iced tea and her father's famous Bloody Marys that he made every year for Thanksgiving dinner.

“He's under the weather,” Kitty B. says. “Again.” She hopes they can't detect the sarcasm. “I'm so sorry.”

“That's too bad,” Roscoe says. “We were really looking forward to finally meeting him.”

“Yeah,” Shawna says as she squints her eyelids. They're painted a shade of bright green, and they sparkle in the midday sunlight.

Marshall leans into Katie Rae. “Should you go up and see him?” Katie Rae looks to Kitty B. “Yeah,” she says. “Mama, I'm going to see if I can talk him into coming out.”

“Go ahead, honey.” Kitty B. snags a strip of peeling paint that dangles from the porch railing. “You might have better luck than me.”

The Benningtons all prefer iced tea over Bloody Marys, and Kitty B. wonders if their denomination is somehow connected to the Baptists. They sit on the porch and nibble on her pickled shrimp appetizer and these wonderful new spinach and pine nut tarts that she pulled from last month's
Southern Living
.

Lowcountry autumns are glorious and today is no exception. The sky is a clear blue and the water reflects the sun as the ripples of the incoming tide pour in, filling the surrounding marsh banks. Thankfully, the dogs are too lazy to play chase, and they nap together beneath the rosebush after sniffing thoroughly around the Benningtons' minivan. Mr. Whiskers, the cat, is nowhere to be seen, and Kitty B. hopes to heaven that he's not in the kitchen nipping at the turkey.

On the porch, they can all hear the dull roar of
Parsifal
as it pounds against the window panes in LeMar's room above them. Kitty B. recalls bits of the production LeMar took her to see at the Newberry Opera House several years ago. There was this tall spear—the one that was used to pierce Christ—that Parsifal had to recover in order to heal the king of an order of knights who guard the Holy Grail. Kitty B. kept worrying that the lead was going to trip and stab himself with it.
Opera
, she thinks.
What melodrama.

Within minutes Katie Rae returns. She holds her hands palms up and says. “He says he needs to stay in bed and rest his neck.”

“Oh, dear,” Roscoe says. “Think I could go up and pray for him?”

Marshall clears his throat dramatically in an attempt to put the brakes on his dad. Kitty B. guesses that Marshall knows enough about their family to know when to let LeMar be.

Roscoe sits back and nods. “Well, y'all just tell me if you'd like me to.”

Kitty B. nods and helps herself to a tart. “He'll live,” she says, trying to strike a cordial tone. In truth, she is not convinced that all of LeMar's ailments aren't in his head, but she's not about to voice her suspicions to the Benningtons. Who knows what they would think of her—a wife who doesn't believe her husband. Surely that's a big-time sin.

“What a nice place,” Shawna says as they watch a row of pelicans cross low over the river. “Marshall tells us it belonged to
your
family.”

“Yes,” Kitty B. says. “I grew up spending every summer here, tubing down the river or curled up in the tire swing reading a book.”

“Nice,” Shawna says.

Kitty B. pictures herself barefoot in a smocked dress, climbing up the oak tree just in front of the river. “'Course my parents had live-in help back then,” she says to the Benningtons, “and there was always somebody to chase after my brothers and me and make sure we didn't get into too much trouble. There was a lovely lady, Lucy, who was our housekeeper, and she would bring me in the kitchen every afternoon and let me help her cook dinner. She's the one who really taught me how.”

“What a gift she gave you,” Roscoe says.

Kitty B. can see Lucy coming out on the front porch and hollering up at her. “Get down from there, child. It's time to pickle the watermelon.”

“Yes,” Shawna says. “Katie Rae gave me the
Lowcountry Manna
cookbook for my birthday last week, and I'm going to make something from it for our next covered dish supper.”

Just as Kitty B. is about to set the turkey on the table, Tommy and Cricket arrive, dressed for business. Tommy in a navy suit and tie and Cricket in a straight, black and white houndstooth dress from Talbots that hits her at the knee. They are as polite as can be to the Benningtons, but Kitty B. can tell they're out of sorts.

Tommy makes himself a giant Bloody Mary, and just as he is about to sit down on the sofa, Cricket nudges him and says, “Daddy's not around. You better go carve the turkey.”

“Girls,” Kitty B. says to her daughters as she walks toward the kitchen. “Why don't y'all give me a hand?”

When Cricket walks through the kitchen door, a roach the size of a stick of Juicy Fruit gum scurries across the kitchen counter toward the green bean casserole, his antenna waving wildly in the air.

“Disgusting,” she says. “Mama,
why
don't you get somebody out here to spray. Those palmetto bugs don't exactly give me a good feeling about eating this meal.”

Kitty B. turns to Cricket. “Honey,” she says. “We live on the edge of the river with bugs and water rats and raccoons galore, and there's not enough spray in the world that could keep them out.”

“Hush,” Cricket says. “Don't let the guests hear that, Mama. It's disgusting. Normal people
don't
live this way.”

Then Katie Rae walks in and closes the door behind her. “Did you say there was a rat in here? I can hear y'all in the living room, you know?”

“No,” Kitty B. says as she takes off her shoe and prepares to smash the roach as it inches its way over to the coffeemaker. “Just a palmetto bug.” She takes one good swipe at him, but he swiftly makes his way behind the oven.

“I bet you have droppings in your cabinets, Mama.” Cricket opens up the silverware drawer and starts inspecting.

“Katie Rae.” Kitty B. dusts off a tray and hands it to her. “Make your daddy a plate and take it up to him for me, okay?”

Katie Rae nods and dips her finger in the gravy bowl. “Mmm.” She says.

Kitty B. dips her own finger in for a sample. “Think it has enough salt?”

Cricket shakes her head as she rubs a paper napkin around the inside corners of the drawers. “Mama, please wash your hands before you touch any more of the food. It's uncouth.”

“Do you see anything?” Katie Rae says as she peers over Cricket's shoulder.

“Yes, I do.” Cricket takes a napkin and presses it down into the drawer.

“See,” she says as she opens the napkin to reveal the tiniest black speck.

Kitty B.'s face reddens. She called her daughter in to help, not for a kitchen inspection. Who in the world could keep palmetto bugs out of a house on the river?

“Put that away,” she says to Cricket. “Now let's have a nice dinner, okay?”

Dinner runs smoothly except for Cricket pushing her food around her plate. One little insect, and she can't enjoy the meal it took Kitty B. two days to prepare. Honestly.

The Benningtons compliment Kitty B. on the food, and she is delighted when they go back for second helpings. After she serves the pecan pie, everyone clears out pretty quickly and Kitty B. is left to do the dishes by herself. Her daughters are so used to her running the kitchen that they don't seem to give the sink full of dishes a second thought, and she's not about to say anything to them. She'd just as soon do them herself than have Cricket grading her washing technique or the insides of her china cabinet.

Just as she clears the pecan pie plates, LeMar stumbles down the stairs in his boxers and his T-shirt.

“Kitty B.,” he calls. “I'm telling you I need some ibuprofen. Not some of this decrepit aspirin from Tidemann.”

“Well, why don't you go and get some, LeMar? I've got an entire holiday dinner to clean up after and then I've got to go see about Hilda.”

He walks into the dining room clutching his neck. She looks up from the pile of teacups she's stacking to see his eyes squinting at her.

“You are going to be the death of me,” he says. Then he turns and storms back up the stairs.

Kitty B. lets out a deep sigh. She drops the china on the table, grabs her keys, and drives the twenty miles into town to buy some packets of ibuprofen from the only place open on Thanksgiving Day—the Exxon station. Then she drives back home, walks up the stairs, and puts them on his bedside table with a glass of water.

“I'm going to Hilda's,” she says. “Maybe you'll feel better with me out of the house, since I am the one responsible for all of your misery.”

She packs up some leftovers and heads toward town. She's so mad at LeMar she can't see straight. As she speeds down the dirt road, the small brown oak leaves swirling behind her, she must admit that she's been mad at him for over twenty-five years now.

~ DECEMBER 21, 1979 ~

LeMar and Kitty B. waltzed to the big band at the Sally Swine Christmas party at the Azalea Club outside of Bluffton. Kitty B. had just stopped nursing Baby Roberta—no one nursed babies past a couple of months back then—but her breasts still ached, especially at night, and they pounded when LeMar pulled her close before he dipped her. A teenage girl from the other side of the island was watching Cricket and the baby, and Kitty B. was anxious to get home to see about them. However, LeMar had recently been promoted to regional manager of several stores in the Lowcountry, and they needed to stay a good while at the party and visit with the executives and their wives.

“Sing for us, LeMar,” Mr. Bouton asked. He was the president of the Sally Swine Company, and LeMar wouldn't dare turn him down. Not that LeMar ever minded having a turn in the spotlight. He went over and whispered to the pianist, and then he launched into a solo of “O Holy Night ”

They didn't pull into Cottage Hill until around midnight that evening. The babysitter was snoring on the couch in front of the television, and Cricket was asleep, curled up in a ball in the center of her bed with all of the covers kicked off.

When Kitty B. rounded the corner into the baby's room, she thought Baby Roberta was sleeping soundly on her belly, and she didn't want to disturb her. She leaned in close and gently touched her diaper to see if it needed changing.