The Wedding Machine (9 page)

She's in a hurry to get these sweets in the air-conditioned car so they won't lose their shape in the midday August heat. With the containers stacked up to her chin, Kitty B. nearly trips over Katie Rae, who giggles uncharacteristically on the porch steps with the cordless phone stuck to her ear.

“Don't be late,” Kitty B. whispers as the dogs run up and lick her knees, their wet noses leaving streaks of slobber across her snug linen skirt.

Katie Rae nods and waves her away. “Oh, I've got this
thing
later today,” she says into the receiver. “It's where you go and gawk at all of the wedding gifts and ooh and ahhh over them. Rather obnoxious, if you ask me.”

Before Kitty B. has to shoo away the dogs, they catch the scent of the next-door neighbor's goat that bleats at them through the rotting wooden gate. In a flash, the canines tear off to sniff through the white picket slats where the paint is peeling off the soft wood in jagged strips.

Oh well
. Kitty B. looks back at her weathered home with its mold between the clapboards and its peeling paint and the muddy paw prints along the porch. There is a spot halfway down the screened door where Honey scratches and scratches until someone lets her in on cold nights, and there is a crack in the attic window where a magnolia limb fell onto the roof during a tropical storm
last
October.

As she pulls out of the driveway in the Lincoln Continental that used to belong to her mama, she looks up to LeMar's window to see Mr. Whiskers leap from the roof through the parting curtains.

“Scat!” LeMar's voice is so deep that she can hear him through the sealed car window and the blasting air conditioner that cools the melting makeup on her face. “Kitty B.! Get this cat out of here!”

Katie Rae puts a finger to her other ear and walks out to the dock to continue her conversation with the first real boyfriend they think she's ever had, and Kitty B. waves to no one as she turns the nose of the Lincoln toward the dirt road that leads to Jasper, leaving a swirl of dead oak leaves and one disgruntled husband in her wake.

“Thank God for you, Kitty B.!” Ray says, greeting her at the door before striking an Ava Gardner–like pose. “Now don't I look like death warmed over?”

Ray's deep purple eye, coated profusely in concealer and powder, can't be hidden. Kitty B. gawks at it. Beneath the eye, a stitched-up gash traces Ray's cheekbone in an awful blackish crimson.

“Are you all right?” Kitty B. bites her lip and cringes.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Ray says. “That air bag saved my eye, the doctor said. And Willy just happened along the same road right behind me. I didn't wake up until I was in the Ravenel Hospital. They checked me out all over and sent me home around three in the morning.”

“Oh, Ray.” Kitty B. shakes her head in disbelief. “It could have been terrible.”

“It
was
—for the buck,” Richadene calls over her shoulder as she opens one of Kitty B.'s Tupperware lids and starts placing the iced petits fours on a tiered silver platter by the kitchen sink.

“How did it happen?”

“I can't really say,” Ray says. “I was just driving home, daydreaming, I suppose, and the next thing I knew this enormous buck was striking a pose in front of me.”

Cousin Willy pops his head in from the back garden. “Biggest one I've seen in years—over two hundred pounds. Bent the hood of the station wagon like an accordion.” He walks over to Ray and pats her shoulder. “Now take it easy today.” He examines her gash and gives her a kiss on the forehead.

“I will,” Ray says. “Now go on. You know tea parties aren't your thing.”

“Only you, Kitty B.,” Sis says from the living room where she is pouring sugar into the china bowls at the tea stations, “could pull off making four dozen petits fours twelve hours before a tea.”

Sis looks so fresh in her black linen pants and pink satin blouse with the mandarin neck. Kitty B. notices her newfangled sliders—what does Cricket call them? Mules? They have a sharp pointed toe, too narrow for an actual toe to fit, and a pencil-thin heel. Sis looks as though it could be her wedding gifts the gals will see while sipping tea, as if she has a whole exciting life ahead of her.

“Look at your shoe, Kitty B.!” Ray points at the dirt-smudged ribbon that dangles by a thread from the top of her foot.

Kitty B. looks down at the shoe and tugs at her skirt in hopes that they won't notice how tight it is, but the crease pops right back, and she walks toward the utility closet. “Got any superglue?”

“Oh, no, that will
ruin
the shoe.” Ray firmly shakes her head. “You need to take it to Floride—she'll sew it on properly for you.” “Oh, Ray, I don't care about that.”

“Me neither,” Sis giggles. “I use a glue gun to put my buttons back on all the time, and do you see this spot right here?” She points to a moth hole in her black pants. “I just took a sharpie pen and dotted it so my skin looked black underneath right there.”

“You shouldn't tell things like that, Sis,” Ray says.

“Loosen up, Mom.” Priscilla strolls through the kitchen in nothing but boxers and a black T-shirt that reads, “W” and in small letters below it, “IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.” Kitty B. wonders what in the world that means.

Priscilla's hair has these kind of thick, knotted ropes that remind Kitty B. of oversized cocoons or the tubular hornets' nests on the back of her house. Ray says they are dreadlocks, and she hates them to death.

“Hi, Priscilla,” Sis says with her arms outstretched, and Kitty B. follows behind her to give her best friend's daughter a hug.

Priscilla smells like incense and body odor, like the hippie ladies that sell their crudely sewn dolls in the outdoor market in Charleston. When Kitty B. and Priscilla's necks lock, Kitty B. squeezes her tight, and she can feel her sharp little shoulder blades jutting out between her fingers like angel wings. Then Kitty B. wells up with her usual child-sickness, relieved that it is happening now before the bride arrives.

Sis pats Kitty B.'s back and Ray hands her a Kleenex. They know what this is about, and Kitty B. is thankful that they don't pay her much attention.

“Pris, have you showered yet?” Ray says.

Priscilla sniffs under her thin arms and crinkles her nose.

Ray presses at the black around her eye and winces. “The Hildas will be here in less than thirty minutes and the guests in less than an hour, honey.”

Priscilla tugs at the back of her dreadlocks. She raises one eyebrow and says, “Tell me there's a halfway decent coffeehouse in Jasper by now.”

“Coffee!” Ray's long, thin hands curl into two bony fists behind her back. “I've got coffee in the pot! Now grab a cup and get
ready
! You're the maid of honor, for heaven's sake!”

Priscilla wipes her nose on her T-shirt, and Kitty B. notices that she has some kind of small, silver hoop earring through her belly button.
Ouch! You'd have to hog-tie me to get that close to my belly
with a needle
.

Priscilla walks over toward the coffeepot, which she lifts up and sniffs before pouring the contents out into the sink.

“Well, let's get to work, ladies.” Ray turns back to the gals. “Sis, you put the final touches on the tea service, and Kitty B., can you pour the ginger ale in the fruit punch and stack the crystal cups around it?”

Priscilla scratches a blemish on her chin as she stares into the refrigerator, and Ray heads toward her and leans in close. Kitty B. can't make out what Ray says to her, but in a few moments, the young woman walks slowly up the stairs toward her room.

Ray points to the portrait in her dining room of Priscilla at five, in a pale peach smocked Easter dress carrying a bundle of daffodils from the backyard for the flowering of the cross at All Saints Episcopal Church. Kitty B. notices the dimples around the knuckles of the child's soft, round hands as Ray says, “Where did that sweet girl disappear to?”

Ray has outdone herself for the Tea and See. The floral centerpiece is so sweet and airy with the English garden roses and the pale green hydrangea, and there are similar arrangements in silver bowls and teapots and mint julep glasses in every little open space throughout the whole downstairs. The fireplaces are stuffed with fresh-cut magnolia limbs, and a large white bloom punctuates the center of each.

“Look at all the gifts!” Kitty B. says, clapping her hands together. Little Hilda has received some gorgeous things. Probably on account of the fact that her father has been the doctor to everyone in the whole town for decades now. Angus has delivered every baby of Little Hilda's generation and beyond and set a countless number of child-sized broken arms for which he always writes a prescription for “ice cream on demand.” He's helped each one of their parents through the aging and dying process. And now he's rescuing all the middle-aged women by dispensing hormones in record numbers as his gals endure
the big change
.

The gifts are elegantly displayed on glass shelves throughout the living and dining rooms. Complete place settings of all three of Little Hilda's china patterns, plus her silver and crystal pieces, are arranged on an antique card table in the center of the side piazza. Below each plate is a white linen place mat that Ray bought with Willy during their trip to Ireland last April.

The food is presented on the finest compilation of their silver trays and bowls. It's as delicate as the floral arrangements and includes Kitty B.'s petits fours and lemon squares as well as Sis's shrimp salad and cucumber sandwiches and Ray's cheese straws, praline pecans, and fruit kabobs dipped in white and dark chocolate.

The tea stations at both ends of the dining room table are comprised of pots, creams, sugars as well as cups and saucers from the Mottahedeh china that they each received for their wedding presents, and the punch station has crystal cups that Ray bought at an estate auction in Walterboro. Kitty B.'s Mottahedeh pattern is “Duke of Gloucester,” Ray's is “Blue Canton,” and Hilda's is “Tobacco Leaf,” on account of her mama's Virginia plantation ancestry.

Sis handles the mint julep and iced tea station, where the enormous collection of silver mint julep glasses and goblets that she inherited from her father's mother is set up on the antique sideboard along with lemons and fresh mint and delicate linen napkins with her grandmother's monogram.

“Don't you love how the silver goblets fog up when they're filled with ice?” Kitty B. asks no one in particular. She tugs at her skirt, glances toward the front door, and sees that Miss C. is back in business less than twenty-four hours after the wreck.

“Cousin Willy and Justin superglued Miss C.'s arm on sometime in the wee hours,” Sis says.

Kitty B. walks over to the foyer to examine the statue closely. The sleeves on her pink dress cover the crack. A mini pomander of pale green hydrangea, a smaller version of the one made for the bride, dangles from Miss C.'s concrete wrist by a white satin ribbon.