The Wedding Machine (37 page)

“I'm sorry.” Sis reaches her hand out and pats Ray's elbow.

“Well, enough about that.” Ray flaps her hand as if to shoo away a wasp. “I think I better tell y'all what I have on my chest. If I don't, we won't be able to enjoy our tea.”

“Go ahead,” Kitty B. says as she takes a bite of her scone.

Ray's eyes fill with tears and she looks down into her lap. “Oh, y'all, I'm so sorry about how I behaved at Katie Rae's wedding. Will you ever forgive me?”

Kitty B. and Sis look at each other and laugh.

“Is that what this is about?” Sis says. “You think you need to apologize for
that
?”

Kitty B. laughs so hard that she sneezes. Then she blows her nose into her napkin and says, “Ray, honestly, I think we were all glad to see you're human.”

Ray looks up and Sis nods strongly in agreement. She reaches out her hand again. “That was a tough night for you. Probably one of the toughest. You had every right to throw a hissy fit. We would never hold that against you.”

“You wouldn't?” Ray looks back and forth at both of the gals as they shake their heads.

“Never,” Kitty B. says.

“Y'all are dear friends,” Ray says. “I thought you were upset with me about that. I've been worrying over it for the past two months.”

They all laugh together and Ray takes a sip of her tea. Then she fans herself. “Hot tea in March. What was I thinking? I can already feel a hot flash coming on.”

Kitty B. smiles, takes a sip of her tea, and clears her throat. Then a serious look comes over her face. “I will give you both something to worry about.”

“What?” Ray says, as Sis watches three worry lines spread across Kitty B.'s forehead.

Kitty B. pats her eyes with the edge of the napkin. “Y'all, we got some of LeMar's medical tests back yesterday.”

Sis can tell by the tone of her voice that something is not right. “New tests? I didn't know anything else was wrong.”

Kitty B. swallows hard. “Sis, you missed this, but a few weeks ago LeMar fainted while he was pruning his sweetheart rosebush, and Angus helped me drive him over to MUSC for an MRI. The doctors saw a small mass at the very tip of his brain stem.”

“Oh no,” Sis covers her mouth with her hand.

“Well, we just found out that it is a malignant tumor.”

Ray gasps. “It can't be.”

“Not only that, but it's inoperable,” Kitty B. says as she wrings her hands. “Poor fellow. He really had been feeling bad—at least this last year or so—and the doctors had missed it.” She rubs the back of her head. “It was tucked in good back there, and I am just as sick as I can be about it.”

“Well, I just don't understand,” Ray says. “I knew he'd had the fall, but I didn't know about the MRI. I thought he'd been feeling better than ever—”

“He has been,” Kitty B. says. “He's been up and moving for the first time in a decade. The last couple of months have been the best he's had in years.”

Sis jumps up and goes over to embrace Kitty B.

“He says he's going to fight it,” Kitty B. says, her chin on Sis's shoulder. “But the doctors at the Hollings Cancer Center are afraid it started in another source, and they want to run more tests this week to see if that's true.”

They sit this way for several moments, Sis's arms around Kitty B. and Ray staring in disbelief into her tea.

“We're here for you,” Sis says.

“That's right.” Ray nods. “Whatever you need, we'll take care of it.”

“I know y'all will,” Kitty B. says. “Right now I just want to relax with you both and enjoy this tea and scones.” So they sit back and pass the teapot and smell the confederate jasmine in between their bits of conversation.

After tea, they send Kitty B. on home and Sis helps Ray clear the plates and wash the dishes. Just as they are drying the last silver spoon, Ray grabs Sis's hand, spins the ring around, and says, “What's this?”

Sis blushes and steps back.

“You're engaged!” Ray squeals. “Oh, my word, Sis!”

Ray pulls Sis over to the kitchen table with her wet hands. “Sit down right now and tell me everything! Oh, I can't believe I didn't figure this out until now.” Sis watches Ray wipe her hands on her apron. “I want every detail. Every single one.”

“Oh, Ray, he's so wonderful.”

“Yes, yes, of course he is,” Ray says. “Well, when did he ask you? And how?”

“We were sitting on a park bench sharing a chocolate gelato beside the Romanesque Cathedral in his hometown, Lucca. It's in Tuscany just to the northeast of Pisa. It's a quiet little place with ancient roads and churches and a Puccini museum that LeMar would just flip over. Oh, poor LeMar.”

“LeMar is in good hands, Sis.” Ray narrows her eyes. “Now tell me more. Were you surprised?”

“Honestly, no,” Sis says. “From that first night at Katie Rae's wedding, Salvatore dropped hints about getting married. At first I thought he wanted something from me, my little bit of inheritance or an American citizenship. I didn't know what. But over these last few months I've come to realize that he simply felt something for me that he hadn't felt in a long, long time, and the feeling is mutual!”

“Has he ever been married before?” Ray asks. “Does he have any children?”

“Oh, it's the saddest story,” Sis says. “He lost his wife decades ago just before she was to give birth to their first child. He woke up one morning and she was stone still in the bed next to him. She'd had one of those awful embolisms that just gets you out of nowhere, and Salvatore had to lay her and his baby daughter to rest. It took him twenty years to come to grips with it. Don't you know, I could certainly understand that?”

“Yes, you could,” Ray says, tears filling her eyes. She pulls one of Cousin Willy's handkerchiefs out of the seersucker jacket hanging on the chair next to her and pats her eyes. “Of course you can. And you love him? You think you are compatible?”

“I know it's only been three months, but it just feels right,” Sis says, her eyes wide. “As different and foreign as he is, we have a lot in common. We love music, we love our friends, we love the church, and we love our families.” She stands up as if she can't contain herself. “And let me tell you, Ray, this man smells
good
. He smells like tangerines and aftershave and cigarettes and something I can't even put my finger on. Something warm and manly that is just Salvatore, and I just love it. I love him!”

And she knows it's true. She does love him. She couldn't deny it any more than she could the good Lord Himself.

“Well, where are you going to live?” Ray asks.

“We think we can manage to split our time between Jasper and Lucca. Mama wants to give us the old home on Third Street, and Salvatore has a charming little villa by the Cathedral. We will go back and forth every six months, depending on how Mama is feeling and what Salvatore's concert schedule looks like.”

“Can you believe it, Sis?” Ray asks. “I'm just so happy for you.”

“I really can't believe it,” Sis says. “But I'm going to.” She sits back down and squeezes Ray's hands. “Now we want the whole wedding to be quiet and quick. We're both in the sunsets of our lives, and we don't need any kind of fuss.”

Ray nods steadily and looks off for a moment. Sis can see her wheels spinning. “Ray, I don't want a big to-do.”

“I know, I know,” she says. “But you will let me plan it, won't you?” “Of course,” Sis says.

“Great!” Ray stands up and embraces her. “You tell me a date and I'll get going. I don't want you to worry about a thing.”

Sis lets Ray hold her tight for what seems like whole minutes until Willy comes through the back door and says, “All right, gals. What are y'all blubbering about now?”

TWENTY-SIX

Ray

Well, a lot has been going on these last few weeks
. Ray stands back for a moment and surveys the preparations going on in her back garden. She nods in satisfaction. This is going to be the best wedding yet. Despite all the drama that has followed her for months now.

After Ray realized there was no way she could talk sense into Priscilla about an annulment, she'd refused to take her calls. Then J.K.'s parents invited her and Willy to Alexandria for a small post-wedding celebration, and Cousin Willy had to pry her into the car and drive her up there by force. She had to admit that J.K.'s parents seemed quite civilized. His father is a banker, and his mother runs an antique shop on King Street in the heart of the historic district. Mrs. Neely had a beautiful dinner for them in their lovely town-home, and J.K. actually behaved as though he had some manners. The gals—except for Hilda, who has remained completely silent for over six months now—are helping Ray plan a wedding celebration for Priscilla and J.K. that will be held in a few weeks.

Then there was the Saturday of the rescheduled Healing Prayer Revival Day at All Saints. When she thinks about it, Ray cannot believe that was the best day she's had in months. It was the sec ond week in March, just after Sis had come home from Italy and announced her engagement.

~ MARCH 11, 2006 ~

Vangie gathered the ushers in the narthex bright and early. “Thank you all for serving.” She frantically checked her file folders and pulled out the programs and the prayer cards. “Especially you, Ray.”

Ray nodded and pointed to the programs. “Want us to hand those out?”

“Yes,” she said, tugging on the gold bangles on her wrist. “I'm nervous as can be about this, y'all. I hope we'll have a turnout this time.”

Vangie held up a small index card with “prayer requests” written at the top and said, “Now tell the participants that this is a day for their own
personal
healing and revival. If they want prayer for someone else who's on their mind, they should write the person's name on a pew card and give it to you all. Then I need y'all to turn it into the prayer ministers we've brought in from some of the churches in Charleston. They will pray over them.”

When Capers opened the door there must have been about thirty folks lined up in the church yard. Some were All Saints parishioners, but most were just interested folks from the community.

Ray took her place at the back of the church and ushered folks into the old family pews for Capers's teaching on the healings in the New Testament. Then she went up and down the aisles to collect their prayer requests for loved ones, which she handed to a group of priests in the back of the room who received the cards and prayed for them one by one.

During Capers's teaching Ray slipped a prayer card out of the back pew and put the names of the people who she felt needed it: Priscilla and J.K.; William and Carson; Laura, the sister she hadn't seen in four years; and even her daddy, who might still be alive somewhere out there. She slipped the card to one of the men in the back who nodded and gave her a reassuring smile before he read the names on the card and closed his eyes.

When Capers finished his talk, Ray opened the pews one by one and ushered the participants up to the altar where Vangie and Capers put their hands on them and prayed for their concerns and ailments as Sis played some worship songs softly on the little keyboard Capers had rented for the occasion.

No one fainted or fell down into any strange convulsions when Capers and Vangie prayed for them, much to Ray's relief, but every time a participant walked back down the aisle to their seat after prayer, she noticed they had a different look about them. Ray couldn't tell if it was in their body language or their facial expressions, but it was a look of peace and a quiet strength, and it was a new look for each of the folks she had ushered out of the pews. It was so pronounced in some that she had to stop herself from making her own walk down the aisle when Capers turned to the congregation, opened his hands, and said, “Anyone else?”

After Kitty B. served everyone a delicious chicken salad lunch in the churchyard, Ray helped round everyone up and back into the sanctuary for what Capers called the “Generational Healing Eucharist,” which was some kind of unique communion service where, as Capers said, “We will ask God to cut us free from anything negative that has come down our family lines, whether we know about it or not.”

Then Vangie told Ray to hand out these little family tree charts for everyone to fill out. “You fill one out too,” Vangie said, when Ray took her seat next to her in the back. Well, at first Ray thought about making up things about her family—a little cancer here, a little heart disease there—the way she did in Dr. Arhundati's office. But then when Capers announced that no one would see the charts, she actually turned away from Vangie and put a big question mark up her daddy's side and another up her mama's side.

As they went forward for communion, Ray and all of the participants took their charts and placed them in an offering basket. Next they followed Capers out to the graveyard and burned the charts as a symbol of this “cutting free.”

Strange thing was, for Ray's whole life she's wanted to know who her family was. To attach herself to them. She's wanted to know where she came from, and she's wanted to hitch her wagon to her ancestors, whoever they were, without stopping to think that she could be hitching up to something rather awful. Maybe that's why her mama never elaborated. Maybe she was trying to protect her.

She realized this as Capers stoked the ashes and some of the participants wept, and she decided to have her first talk with God since Priscilla's Las Vegas wedding. She turned away from the group and looked out over all of the weathered, ornate gravestones that stood like a grand record of the history of Jasper. She was always envious of the gang who all had family plots around the chapel and a heritage to point to. “That was Grandmama,” one would point. “That was Great Uncle Rudolph,” said another.