She pointed at Liza and Garrett. “You may not be getting married on Saturday,” she said, “but I have by gosh already paid for this wedding, and come Saturday at four o’clock,
somebody
around here is going to get married!”
She turned her laser-sharp gaze on Arnie and then on Charlie, both of whom had suddenly turned white and had definite deer-in-the-headlights looks on their faces.
“All right, gentlemen! Who is it going to be?”
W
hen you’re twentysomething, clear-eyed, fresh-faced, and slim-hipped, choosing a wedding gown isn’t all that difficult.
Oh, I know Liza agonized over the selection of her dress, but let’s face it, beautiful as she is, young as she is, she could have walked down the aisle swathed in a white sheet and still elicited murmurs of approval from the misty-eyed congregation.
But for a woman of a certain age, the range of options for bridal wear is narrow. The obvious choice is a simple ivory suit, perfect for a chapel, garden, or courthouse wedding but not really elegant enough for a big church ceremony. What to do? Too many ruffles or too much lace and you run the risk of looking precious; too many sequins or spangles and you’ll look like you’re playing the big room at the Bellagio.
However, on Saturday afternoon at a few minutes before four, in the bridal changing room of the New Bern Community Church, the full-length reflection in the mirror proved that beauty is ageless.
The dress was perfect in every detail, from the long, diaphanous slope of the bell sleeves, to the simple smooth fit of the bodice, to the soft shawl collar folded in the back, scooping down to reveal just a peek of shoulder blade before falling away gracefully into the sweeping skirt that barely brushed the floor, in layers of chiffon that whispered with every move and breath. Looking in that mirror, I saw a bride so beautiful and serenely happy that I had to blink to keep back the tears.
“Don’t cry!” Abigail commanded. “It’s almost time. You’ll ruin your mascara. Margot, hand her a tissue, would you, please?”
“I can’t help it,” I said, dabbing my eyes. “Abigail, you look lovely.”
She smiled gratefully and turned back toward the mirror.
“It is a beautiful gown, isn’t it? Thank you, Virginia. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been here.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mom said dismissively. “It wasn’t just me. Everybody pitched in with the sewing.”
“But it was your design,” I said. “And it is absolutely perfect.”
Liza sighed. “Abigail, you’re so beautiful. You’re glowing. Franklin is a lucky man.”
She kissed Liza on the forehead before bestowing a beatific smile on all her attendants. “Thank you all. If not for you, none of this would have happened.”
There was some truth in that.
The moments after Abigail tossed out her challenge to the potential grooms had been fraught with tension, drama, and romance, in exactly that order.
There was a pregnant pause as everyone waited for someone to say something.
After a long moment spent staring at my hands, my plate, my half-empty wine glass, I couldn’t fight the urge to raise my eyes to Charlie’s. He looked at me for a moment, pulled on the end of his nose, and said nothing.
I bit my lip, fighting back a surprising swell of disappointment before looking at Margot, who was looking at Arnie with flushed cheeks and a hopeful expression.
Arnie, in turn, gulped, turned an even whiter shade of pale, and quietly passed out, his eyes rolling back before his head lolled forward and fell into his plate of miniature crab cakes with a thump.
The silence was broken. The room suddenly vibrated with noise and confusion. Margot let out a little scream. Charlie grabbed Arnie’s shirt collar and pulled his head up from the plate to check his breathing. Franklin jumped to his feet, scanned the crowd of Saturday night diners, and spotted Jeremy Bellow, a local endocrinologist, among them.
“Jeremy! We need a doctor over here!”
In an instant, Jeremy was at Arnie’s side. Everyone moved back to give Arnie some air and watched nervously as the doctor checked Arnie’s pulse and loosened his tie. Suddenly, Arnie’s head jerked up and his eyes flew open wide, looking confused, as if he’d been jolted awake in the middle of a nightmare.
“What? What’s going on?” he asked, scanning the ring of faces surrounding him.
“You passed out. What’s your name? How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Arnie Kinsella. Three.”
The doctor nodded, looked up at Franklin. “Pulse is a little fast, but he’s fine. Might be a good idea for him to go home and rest for a little while, but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” He turned to Arnie. “Have you been under an unusual amount of stress lately?”
“Apparently,” Abigail mumbled under her breath.
Margot shot her a look. “Come on, Arnie. I’ll drive you home.”
The doctor went back to his table to finish his dinner. Charlie called over a waiter and told him to put Dr. and Mrs. Bellow’s bill on the house tab. Arnie and Margot said good night and walked out the door, with Margot holding Arnie’s elbow, just in case. Liza and Garrett took their now-vacant places at the table.
“Well!” Abigail said wryly. “This has been an interesting evening, hasn’t it? Let’s sit down and order our entrées before anything else happens.”
“Too late,” Franklin said.
And then, in the middle of the crowded restaurant, he got down on one knee, took his wife’s hand, and said, “Abigail, my darling, would you do me the honor of marrying me, again?”
The pandemonium that broke out after Franklin’s proposal and Abigail’s joyful acceptance was even greater than after Arnie’s fainting spell. The whole restaurant broke into waves of applause, whistles, and shouts of congratulations. Franklin ordered champagne for everyone and said they were all invited to the wedding.
“The wedding!” Abigail cried. “Oh, Franklin, it’s only a week away! I’ve got to go home and start planning!”
“Abbie, what are you talking about? Everything is already planned. You’ve done nothing
but
plan this wedding for the last five months. I know it was all for Liza, but face it, sweetheart, you really put together the ceremony and reception that you’d want, or very nearly. I’m sure there’s a little tweaking to be done here and there, but nothing that can’t be easily handled by next week.”
Franklin was right, but he was also wrong. Some changes would need to be made—actually more than Franklin realized—but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be done in the next seven days, especially if you had a quilt circle in your corner.
I patted Abigail on the arm. “Calm down, Abbie. You’re not going to be able to get anything done at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, anyway. Tomorrow, we’ll all pitch in and give you a hand. Won’t we, girls?”
Ivy, Mom, and Dana nodded in agreement. Liza said, “Sure we will. I’m out of school and unemployed. What else do I have to do? From here on out, I’m all yours.”
“But I thought you were going to Paris.”
“Paris can wait a week or two. It’s not going anywhere.”
Abigail smiled. “Thank you, Liza, darling. Would you be my maid of honor?”
Liza grinned. “I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”
It had been a busy seven days but, working together, we’d done the job. The next day, Liza, warming to her new role as maid of honor, called a meeting at the quilt shop and started handing out assignments. Everyone was there bright and early, including Margot, who, if she had any lingering disappointments over Arnie’s fainting spell, didn’t show it. In fact, she seemed delighted about the whole thing. She said her only regret was that she hadn’t been there to see Franklin’s proposal personally.
Knowing how busy we were all going to be over the coming week, I called Wendy Perkins and asked if she might be willing to come in and help out in the shop. Fortunately for me, business at the real estate office was slow and she was happy to get the extra work. Garrett worked overtime, handling his job and a good part of Margot’s. And Dana, who had turned out to be a very fast learner, took over most of the Internet and mail-order fulfillment from Ivy and even ventured downstairs to help Wendy out at the registers when she was shorthanded.
Margot called all the guests, informing them of the bride and groom substitution and reconfirming or canceling their RSVPs. The number of cancellations was nearly equal to the number of Franklin and Abigail’s additions to the guest list, so it all worked out.
Liza was in charge of helping Franklin and his new groomsmen—Charlie as best man, plus Garrett, Arnie, and Judge Gulden—get their tuxedos ordered and tailored. She also got the bridesmaid dresses from her roommates and personally altered and hemmed them so they’d fit the new additions to the bridesmaid roster: Liza and I. While she was at it, she cancelled the Hawaiian honeymoon and booked a sumptuous oceanfront cabana in Bermuda, complete with dinner reservations, champagne and strawberries on arrival, a beachside couples massage, a guided tour of the island, a dolphin encounter, and a private scuba-diving lesson, as well as two first-class airline tickets.
None of this was easy to accomplish with less than a week’s notice but, in true Burgess family fashion, Liza called in favors, dropped names, and pulled strings with a subtle surety that made her aunt proud. And when the flowers that had been ordered from Hawaii arrived in New Bern looking shriveled and lifeless, she took care of that, too, cutting gardenias from Abigail’s greenhouse and arranging them into a beautiful bridal bouquet.
Under Mom’s direction, I spent the week working on Abigail’s dress. For all my experience as a quilter, it had been years since I’d sewn any clothing. But on Sunday, after Abigail called from Byron Dennehey’s office, moaning that every dress she’d tried on made her look either dowdy or like an aging runway model gone badly to seed, Mom suggested we make the dress. Frankly, I had my doubts. But Mom’s expertise as a quilter was surpassed only by her draping and tailoring skills. It took both of us working almost round the clock, with extra help from Margot, Ivy, and Liza, to get it done, but we did, and the end result was more than worth the effort.
Wearing the dress we’d made, carrying the bouquet of white gardenias Liza had arranged, Abigail had never looked more beautiful. But it wasn’t the dress that made her so.
Abigail, with all her faults and flaws and fears, had found love.
I had seen it when Franklin had had his heart attack, all those months before, when she’d sat by his bedside every day and when, in spite of his then poor health and the uncertainty of their future, she’d agreed to marry him at his hospital bedside. I’d seen it when Franklin, in spite of the slights and neglect he’d suffered at his wife’s hands, had refused to give up on her or their love, had swallowed his pride and hurt feelings and helped her come back to herself. And I saw it again today as Abigail, eager and anxious as a girl of twenty, looked herself over in the mirror, running her hand over her hair one more time because she wanted to look her very best, not for the people in the pews, but for Franklin and Franklin alone.
That was the face of love, I realized, imperfect and sometimes unlikely, but unmistakable and true.
Abigail leaned closer to the mirror, examining her reflection with a critical eye, then drew her fingernail carefully across the edge of her lower lip, making sure that the line of her lipstick was absolutely even. When that was done, she glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Well, I suppose it’s time,” Abbie said. “Shall we?”
A knock sounded on the door. “Ladies? Are you decent?”
Liza opened the door. “Come on in, Byron. We’re dressed and ready to get this wedding under way. Let’s go!”
Byron made an apologetic little grimace. “Not just yet. We’re going to have to hold for a few minutes.” He looked to Abigail.
“Nothing to worry about. It’s Arnie. He’s feeling a little woozy. The sanctuary is a little warm. I think the heat got to him.”
Margot, in an uncharacteristically irritated voice, said, “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s got nothing to do with the temperature, unless, of course, you’re referring to the temperature of his feet—as in cold. And it isn’t even his wedding! Argh!” Margot yelped with exasperation.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“In the pastor’s study. Sitting with his head between his knees.”
Margot sighed heavily. “I’ll go talk to him, see if I can calm him down. And I know exactly how to do it too! I’ll tell him I don’t want to marry him, not now or ever! Why would I?” she cried. “Who would want to be married to someone who gets woozy over even the mention of matrimony?”
Margot lifted her chin and put her hands on her hips, blue eyes sparking with anger.
“When I marry—
if
I marry—it’ll be because someone loves and wants me more than anything and because I feel exactly the same about him. It’s not like I’m some charity case, you know! It’s not like I
need
a man. I’m fine as I am. I’ve got a great life and wonderful friends, and I can take care of myself! I don’t need Arnie Kinsella to be happy. I don’t need
any
man to make me happy—not now, not ever! And I’m going to march over there and tell him so!”
And with her head held high, a transformed and newly defiant Margot swept past Byron and out the door to give Arnie Kinsella a piece of her mind.
Margot’s exit was so sudden and so surprising that, for a moment, I was stunned into silence, but before Margot was even out the door, Mom started clapping her hands and said what we all were thinking: “Bravo, Margot! Good for you!”
“Yeah!” Ivy cried, joining in the applause with the rest of us. “You go, girl!”
“Woot! Woot!” Liza yelled, swinging her fist in a circle.
“Well done!” Abigail cried.
“That’s right, Margot! You tell him!” I called out the door as Margot marched away, the sound of her high heels echoing an intrepid drumbeat as she marched across the lobby and took a left into the corridor that led to the pastor’s study.
I turned around to face the others. “Did you see that? I’m so proud of her!”
“Well, it’s about time,” Abigail declared. “I was beginning to think she’d never see the light. A woman shouldn’t need a man to feel complete. Especially a woman as lovely and accomplished as Margot!”
“But,” Liza said, “don’t you think it would be nice if she did find someone someday?”
“Only if he’s the right someone,” I said. “Someone who’ll love her as much as she loves him.”
“And definitely someone who doesn’t get the vapors at the thought of marriage,” Abigail muttered as she smoothed the sleeve of her gown.