A Wedding Invitation (4 page)

A
fter two glasses of champagne and letting the band’s tunes from the seventies mellow my disbelief, I don’t care that I know no one here. The day is like a dream—soft clouds, a faint breeze, and the sky is bluer than the coneflowers in Dovie’s garden.

I’m seated at a table dressed in white linen under a canopy of more white. Taylor—I did have to ask him for his name again—and four couples share the table. Clear vases of day lilies, yellow carnation buds, and miniature roses decorate the center; the outside patio of the Winston Avalon Club is adorned with ceramic planters of impatiens and petunias.

So far I’ve learned that the bride and groom are from Winston-Salem. The farthest north they’ve been is Richmond, but that is about to change. Tomorrow morning they’ll fly to San Francisco for their honeymoon. “San Francisco,” chirps the bride, dragging out the name of the city into eight syllables.

I hope they’ll think I’m Taylor’s date and then won’t try to figure out the real reason I’m here. I watch their narrow bodies swirl onto the dance floor like two twigs on a windy day. They are still in their wedding attire, although she’s removed her veil, letting it hang in a bushy fir tree by the steps to the clubhouse.

Taylor asks what I do. He has a tiny mole on his left cheek, and when he smiles it scrunches close to his eye.

“Well . . .” I clear my throat, look into his eyes, and begin. “I work at a boutique in Falls Church, Virginia, with my mom. She owns the place, and we sell women’s clothing and jewelry.” I explain how my friend Natasha is covering for me so that I can be here today and that she and I like to walk for exercise and then buy chocolate ice cream from the vendors near the Washington Monument. I even toss in the fact that Natasha not only walks but also runs, and on a good day she can run a mile in six minutes.

“So do you ever jog?”

“No, not me. Jogging makes my teeth hurt.” I tell a story about my great-uncle Charlie, who learned to sprint so that he could get away from the law. The police in Winston weren’t fond of his moonshine operation. When he bought a Harley, getting away from the police became easier for him. “At least that’s what they tell me about him,” I conclude. “I saw him a few times, but he was pretty old by then. He’d been in World War II, and his war stories and those about escaping from North Carolina officers sort of got mixed together.”

When Taylor laughs, I’m fueled to continue. I share another tale about my late uncle who once told an inquisitive cop that he was making molasses in his basement. As I pause, Taylor excuses himself and walks toward the fountain, avoiding a girl in pink bows and black patent leather shoes.

It is then that I realize I’ve been talking too much. I haven’t asked him anything about himself; I only answered his questions about me. When will I learn? Flirty and chatty only go so far—after a while a guy wants to know that I’m interested in him. I walk along the stone pathway from under the canopy into the sunshine, blinking from the brightness.

A woman in high heels tries to chase a boy in a gray suit. The child runs toward the gurgling fountain, giggles, and turns to see if his mother is following. He shrieks as she attempts to get him, grabbing his collar. He slips from her reach and squeals as she cries, “Jeremy! Get over here now.”

Walking farther, I pretend to admire the roses in the gardens that surround the patio. While the large yellow blooms look lavish and healthy, I like the tiny buds still waiting to expose their petals. A few of the buds have aphids crawling up their sides, and as I circle away from the gardens, I feel like those bugs, skittering about aimlessly. I consider going to my car to get my camera, and then, when a light wind scatters a candy wrapper along the stone walkway, a revelation hits me.

When I opened the wedding invitation months ago, the envelope it came in was blown away by the wind. What if that envelope was addressed to someone else? Of course it was. It was probably for the tenant who used to live in my apartment—the person who was invited to this wedding instead of me. Her name is Joanna Lawson, and she gets the good mail. Sometimes I’ll scratch
No longer lives here
on the envelopes with a pen and slip them in the mailbox at the post office. What a coincidence that Joanna and I both know a woman named Avery Jones.

Back at my table, strewn with cloth napkins, half-eaten platters of finger sandwiches, and plastic champagne flutes, I’m aware of another revelation. I will never attend a wedding and reception solo again. It’s too lonely. Dexter better have a good excuse for standing me up, I think, and then I wonder what Aunt Dovie is doing. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. Digging into my bag, I retrieve my car keys.

“Do you know when they plan to cut the cake?”

It’s him—Taylor.

Pleased that he came back, I smile. “Soon, I think.”

Shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, he asks, “Would you like to dance until then?”

I blurt, “What do you do?”

Confusion lines his face.

“I mean, for a living. Work. I never asked.”

He leads me onto the dance floor. “I’m a P.I.”

“A what?” I lean in and wait for his reply. The band seems to have increased their volume as they play Chris de Burgh’s “Lady in Red.”

“Private Investigator.” He places his arms loosely around my waist. “Licensed.”

“Like Magnum?” My arms gently encircle his shoulders. It’s been years since I’ve danced with anyone.

“Almost. I live in Baltimore, not Hawaii.”

If he investigates for a living, can he tell I’m not supposed to be here?

“Well, you’re still young,” I tell him. “Perhaps you’ll end up in Hawaii one of these days.”

As he draws me closer to his chest, I rest my head against his shoulder, sleepy from the champagne. He’s like an angel, saving me from heading back to Aunt Dovie’s completely frustrated.

The next song is Madonna’s “Borderline,” and as the band belts out the words, “You just keep me hanging on,” my throat grows dry. As I follow Taylor off the dance floor, I reach for another glass of champagne, flash a smile at the private eye, and watch those from our table rise to dance. Their animated bodies blur as my memory, like a descending elevator ride, takes me down to a time when I thought I’d never be able to let go.

six

August 1985

M
y first class of Vietnamese students was graduating. I’d attended other graduation parties at the camp, so I knew what to expect—laughter, noise, and an unsurpassed frenzied energy. But this night in August, I wasn’t just a guest, I was the one in charge, responsible for keeping order.

The eight and nine year olds were wild with excitement as they rushed into my dusty classroom, their flip-flop-clad feet sliding across the slate floor. Mothers and fathers brought in trays of
chagio
, the spring rolls filled with minced pork that I’d grown to love, and vermicelli noodles topped with basil and mint leaves. Bottles of soda filled my teacher’s desk. The classroom was electrified with children dressed in their best, racing around the benches. Music played on a large Sanyo tape-radio player, and some students chanted, “Dance! Dance!”

Bao, my teacher’s assistant, was punctual, arriving just on time at seven. He wiped his brow with a large handkerchief and stood in a corner under a chain made of strips of forest green paper. I told him that we would eat first and then hand out the graduation certificates. This was the protocol for the graduation ceremonies that took place after each nine-week course ended.

Bao stood silently, his stare somewhere over my head.

“Could you please tell the children?”

He sighed.

I wanted to sigh, too. I wondered why he’d been assigned this position as a teacher’s assistant when for the past nine weeks he’d done little in the way of helping me teach. His eyes seemed distant, and one day when I entered the room and approached him with a question, he jumped, his whole body shaking.

I concluded he had some physical condition or that he was nervous. That was before I heard his story of his voyage from Vietnam. After I learned how his wooden boat had been seized by pirates on the South China Sea and his father murdered, I let him stand and be removed from reality. During break times, I encouraged the children to not give me so many bottles of Sprite but to take some over to him. They followed my suggestion only to have him refuse their offerings. Then the students would return to my corner of the room to place the declined bottles on the top of my desk, lining them up like a row of tragedies.

When Carson and Brice arrived at the graduation ceremony, I wanted to hug them. They were my sanity—other teachers, ones who spoke my language. My students scooted toward them and chattered in Vietnamese. Carson replied to their questions during the brief pauses. He’d studied Vietnamese from a college buddy at NC State. The friend tutored him in exchange for Carson’s help with calculus.

Brice just smiled as the children watched him, and that was enough; the girls all thought he was “very nice teacha.” It helped that his hair was thick and blond, and his eyes were the color of a summer sky over Virginia Beach.

The ceiling fan squeaked as I called the group to silence. I was wearing a mint green skirt and white blouse, my bare arms and legs tan from treks to the coast in nearby Morong. The flip-flops I had on were a gift from Avery Jones. The night before, I’d gone to one of the billets to get a manicure and pedicure from a young Vietnamese woman, the older sister of a student. She’d soaked my feet in a metal pan of cool water that soon turned brown. My feet were subject to dirt every day, and keeping them clean while wearing flip-flops was a feat I never mastered during my year in the Philippines.

“Welcome,” I said after turning down the volume on the cassette player. “Welcome,” I repeated and waited for the children to find places on the wooden benches. “First we will eat.” Sweat moistened my armpits.

Carson grinned at me from where he sat next to Brice, and my arms relaxed against my sides.

“Dance, Miss Bravencourt!” Two girls in short skirts and smeared lipstick were adamant.

“We will dance after.” I clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention, a gesture I felt was the epitome of a schoolteacher, and the results were worth it.

The thirty-one students were silent until I said, “Let’s eat!”

Then there was boisterous laughter and wiggling.

We served the fried spring rolls and noodles in baby-blue plastic bowls and passed around bottles of Coke and Sprite. Seated on the wobbly benches, we enjoyed the meal. Later, there were pieces of candy and gum that seemed to come from nowhere, although I had a suspicion that fingers brought them into the room through the slatted wooden windows. Faces peered in to watch us from the narrow openings. Lien, one of the Amerasian girls, was among them. She entered the room once, but her brother Huy shooed her out. So she returned to observe us from the outside.

When dishes were cleared, it was time for the graduation certificates, followed by plenty of pictures taken by a man in the camp who had a camera. After developing these, he would charge a peso for each one.

I had filled in the name of each child from the roster I’d been given before the term started. I decided to let Bao pronounce the names instead of butchering them with my incorrect pronunciation. Handing him the certificates, I asked, “Could you please read the names?”

He withdrew his handkerchief, used it to take the moisture from his face, and said, “Yes.”

I told him to read the names as I had written them—the American way—the first name, followed by the middle name, and then the last name, not the other way around as was the Vietnamese custom. We were, after all, trying to prepare our students for how things were done in the United States.

Bao’s hand shook, rattling the certificates, and after reading the child’s name from the first one, he gave me the document. The first student, Ma Le Tung, came up to accept it. She squeezed my hand and then we posed for a photo. The teacher’s assistant coughed and read the next student’s name—Huy Hong. With his black hair slicked back from sweat, the young boy stepped forward, his smile showing his pride in his accomplishment.

After the certificates were handed out, I asked the class to pose for a photo. “But before we do this,” I said, pausing so that Bao could translate, “I want you all to know that I have enjoyed teaching you. Some of you will be leaving soon to go to America. Your family’s name will appear on The List and that will mean you are set to go, done with camp life, and on to a new adventure. I wish you the best.”

The students clapped then, a few of them shouting, “Thank you, teacha! We see you in American!”

Although their flubbing of the English language made the teacher in me cringe, I let them bellow out phrases for a while and then asked them to come to the front of the room by the chalkboard for the group photo. Instructing them to cram together until I could see them all through my Nikon’s viewer, I said, “One, two, three!” and let my camera capture their smiles.

When the music turned loud, the children dispersed around the room, crying, “Dance now!”