“A squaw dress?” Grandma Vic had gasped. She didn’t understand why a girl with a professional job in Washington would purchase something so flimsy in comparison to the stiff, satin, stand-alone gowns she was used to seeing the brides of our family zipped into. I’d thought I might get credit for thrift, that being so highly prized in my family, but this morning in the living room her eyes were forced away from me as from one awaiting deportation. I patted her fragile shoulder. “You look so beautiful.”
* * *
Olivia showed up for the wedding, stepping down from a sloppily painted, rusted VW bus into the swirling wind that always encircled our huge Gothic church—a memorial, built by grieving parents in honor of a lost child. I did a double take when I saw my sister carrying her Samsonite Vanity Case and her flapping bridesmaid’s dress on a hanger.
“That’s Olivia?” Sandy gasped. She’d expected a hippie, of course, and so had I. For some reason, for the first time in her life, Olivia was wearing heavy make-up, a beige mask like something for turning tricks on Reno Street in Oklahoma City. She’d blackened her eyebrows, covered her eyelids with blue grease and painted her full, pouty lips bright red.
“She’s never looked like this before. I guess someone who’s been living on a commune shouldn’t try to jump backward into femininity so abruptly.”
When Olivia got sight of me standing beside the entrance, she took a step back. I gritted my teeth. I wanted to run to her and find out what she’d done with the beautiful golden girl my sister had been. But I stood still, and my friend, Deanna, who was approaching from the other direction, her fiery hair flying in the wind, quickly shifted her things into one hand. “Olivia?” she called and hurried up to put her arm around my sister’s waist. “Goodness, darlin’. It’s so good to see you.” She drew Olivia along toward the door. I held it open for them. Women like Deanna were the salt of the earth.
The General had left for the church before I got downstairs this morning. He had announced last night that well before the ceremony he would station himself in the large hallway outside the sanctuary from which he planned to route all the girls—bride, bridesmaids and candle lighters—into the church parlor, and the groom, best man, and the ushers—drafted from the ranks of my cousins—into the minister’s study next door.
The church parlor was smaller than I’d remembered, a cloying chamber of flowered wallpaper, flowered rugs and flowered draperies held down by a long dark trestle table. My bridal party seemed to sink into the florid mass. Mother in pink chiffon caught the light, but the bridesmaids and candle lighters wiggling into their moss green linen sheaths became just so many stalks waving here and there amid the flowered upholstery.
Mother was on familiar ground here in the church parlor where she’d called hundreds of meetings to order and bowed her head for a thousand prayers. Dear Aunt Fel was here, her little sewing kit in her purse for any last minute repairs.
The light from the window fell on the huge box left on the long table by the florist. Mother and I approached it. “How’re you doin’, darlin’?” Mother whispered as we stood side by side to lift the lid of the box.
“Great.” We pulled away the waxy green paper and inhaled the fragrance. The light illuminated the wreaths—freesia, baby’s breath, and yellow roses to be worn on the heads of the bridesmaids, wrist bouquets for the candle lighters. And one perfect circle of white roses for the head of the bride. Also my bouquet—white freesia, stephanotis, roses and violets tucked here and there. Mother and I had whipped through so many decisions by phone, I was amazed to see these flowers, shimmering before me, evidence of arrangements made and then forgotten. “They’re perfect,” I said.
She took both my hands. “Oh, darlin’,” she whispered, “We like Josh so much—a musician, so sweet and handsome. He’s almost worthy of you.” She made a teary smile, and I pulled her to me for a squeeze. We both turned to glance at Olivia who’d kept her back to me since coming in. “Please talk to her,” Mother said.
“Sure, Mom, I’ll find out what’s up in just a sec.” With my arm around her, I guided my mother toward a corner where we could speak without anyone hearing.
“Everything’s okay, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Oh course, Mom,” I promised, “but I’ll be leaving right after the reception, and I haven’t had a chance to ask how you’re doing, with both us girls gone, and Daddy’s blood pressure under control.”
Fear glinted in her eyes, afraid I would again urge her to leave Daddy just as I had off and on for the last ten years.
“You’re in great shape now,” I said, ”healthy and working. Ernest off on his own.” I held her shoulders and smiled into her eyes. “I want you to be happy, too.”
“If you’re happy, it will be enough,” she said and the worry in her eyes made me feel I had cornered her. She rushed on. “I owe Daddy a lot. I always knew he’d dig ditches for me if he had to.” Trapped in gratitude, who was she to complain about a husband who had the one characteristic her father lacked? “Oh Patty, I knew that each of my children would grow up to make good lives for themselves, but you know Daddy.” She obviously wanted to stop here, but I refused to nod and make the gracious close. She looked so frantic and sad I really was tempted to just hug her and stop. “You know,” she began again, “that he would be lost and helpless if I left.”
I saw that I was torturing a woman who didn’t have it in her to hurt him. We hugged and then she began to hand out the wreaths. I watched her moving around the room, gently pinning the flowers on all the long hair. I let out a long aggravated breath. This provider business! It seemed so old fashioned—the
male
breadwinner. But her happiness had been my oldest responsibility, and I shouldn’t have marred this day for her.
“I have an announcement,” Calinda said. “It’s been suggested that we remain standing so as not to wrinkle this linen which all of you know won’t look like much going down the aisle if we’re not careful.” Those who had already sat down stood up. Perfume and hair spray filled the air, as these Oklahoma women bent over the mirrors of their vanity cases to arrange their long hair beneath the wreaths. The old pendulum clock on the parlor wall said 1:50. Perfect. The peals of the great pipe organ struck up the introductory music and poured down the hallway toward us. This was the official church organist playing a Bach Prelude. Mrs. Pryor, wielder of considerable political clout in this church, had convinced the minister that as wedding coordinator she should take over the organ when it was time to play the “Wedding March.” “That’s ludicrous,” Josh had said when I told him to expect a shift downward in keyboard skills when Daddy and I started down the aisle.
“Right,” I said. “This church has more than one pocket of ludicrous.”
Mother returned to the florist’s box for more wreaths and bobby pins. I slipped off my shift and laid it out full length on the trestle table in order to fold it. I was aware that Mrs. Pryor, heavy-footed and big-voiced, had entered the room, and my resolve not to acknowledge her drove me deeper into my folding project. She was turning each of the bridesmaids and candle lighters around as though they were little girls whose sashes and pigtails needed tying up. “Better get a move on, little bride,” she sang out. “Times a-wastin’.”
I threw my full-length white slip over my head and did not emerge from it until she had closed the door behind her. This strapless undergarment to give the dress “a little body,” was a concession to Mother who had frowned at my flesh showing though the lace midriff.
Just as I gave the elastic top of the slip an upward yank to settle it snug under my arms and raise its hem off the floor, I realized my error. I glanced about the room where good women were softly laughing and talking, unaware of the bad joke I’d played on us. My face went hot, and I labored to drag in a heavily scented breath as I knocked softly at the door to the adjoining study. To my relief the great dark tree of my brother immediately filled the slightly opened door as though he’d been waiting for my knock, his mass protecting me from view by the groom and his men.
“My dress,” I whispered. “It’s in a Casa Del Sol shopping bag on my bed.” He nodded and was gone. When I turned around all the women were staring at me.
“Don’t worry. Josh didn’t see me.” I tried to smile. In October I would be thirty years old, too old to be superstitious, too sophisticated to believe in accidents.
Mother realized what had happened and turned white. The town would blame her, and The General would blame her, and now she was blaming herself. I rushed to put my arm around her. “Ernest won’t be a minute.”
A loud knock on the door to the hall drew everyone’s eyes away from me. Olivia opened the door, and the organ music swelled in along with my father in his dress uniform. He had rented a tux like the other men. Why wasn’t he wearing it? How could he do this to me, make a public display of militarism when he knew damn well I spent every day of my life fighting against this stupid, immoral war!
Sandy stepped to my side. “What is that? He looks like a bellhop at the Ritz.”
My father looked splendid. Black coat with bronze oak leaves on his shoulders, his ribbons resplendent across his chest, dashes of red, Persian blue trousers with gold stripes down the sides. White kid gloves. I bit my lip and took in a shuddering breath.
“Where’d Ernest go?” The General demanded of the roomful of women who were fortunately staring at him, so they couldn’t see the bride, red-face with anger. “I saw Ernest run out,” he said.
“She’s not dressed, Daddy,” Olivia said, pressing him back and closing the door. The room was silent.
“How can he do this do you?” Sandy whispered.
“It’s probably not even personal, Sandy. It’s probably good for his morale.”
She frowned at me. “That’s all you have to say?”
“So what can I do? Send him home to change?”
“Oh, he’s not ever going to change, but I thought you had.”
“You saw him. He hasn’t looked that powerful since we arrived. He’s happy.”
“Jesus Christ, Pat.” Sandy left me standing at the window. I looked outside so no one could see my face. I struggled to think only of Joshua, the dearest man I knew, standing on the other side of this wall, good-humored, lending poise to any man in need. This day would end and maybe, twenty years from now we’d laugh about our wedding.
Except for clear-eyed Calinda whom I overheard quietly saying to Deanna—“How many brides have you heard of forgetting their dresses?”—everyone else behaved toward the extremely awkward situation like a proper Oklahoma lady. Part of me wanted to slap each brightly smiling face. At the same time I was enormously grateful to each woman and girl who gallantly pretended nothing was wrong. I sank into a chair.
My thirteen-year-old cousin Marianne had leaned her little bottom against the high arm of a couch and listened raptly while Sandy, the anthropologist, entertained the Oklahomans with her views of men. “Look at them,” Sandy was saying, “frail creatures, their most vulnerable flesh riding out in front, just asking for it.”
Marianne’s jaw dropped.
“Women are the tough ones,” Sandy continued. “Look at us, our privates well-nestled in the pelvic cradle, hip bone bumpers. We’re the tanks!” she said, slapping the hips of her linen sheath. “Men, poor schmucks, they’re the infantry.”
“So we need to protect them, right?” Marianne asked.
“You can protect them if you want to,” Sandy said and abandoned her metaphor.
Thank heaven, Grandma Vic wasn’t in the room. Though she didn’t approve of the dress, she wouldn’t have understood my leaving it behind. She, who had spent her life having her clothes ready—whatever re-styled, recut, borrowed or rummage sale-retrieved goods they may have been. Out in the sanctuary where one and all could see and appreciate her queen-like appearance, she didn’t have to know that her most promising little student was not prepared.
The wreath quivering atop her springy hair, Sandy made her way back to me. She stood close beside the chair where I sat upright in my petticoat. “How’s it going, kid?” She was struggling to be kind after I’d pissed her off.
“It’s going okay.”
“Do you want to marry this guy?”
“I love him with all my heart.”
“Well, sure. Who wouldn’t love him—the nicest guy I ever met, a musician, perfect for you. But shit, Patricia. You left your God-damned dress behind.”
“So?”
“Just checking. One last time.”
We both glanced about the tense room then fell silent. No one had made eye contact with me. They couldn’t believe what they were witnessing. What I needed was a drive-by rescue. A best old friend? A former lover? Tom? Tom, who would keep the motor running until I got up my courage to walk out of here, hike up this petticoat, and sling my leg over the back of his motorcycle. The thought of the raucous tumbling of his idling motor drew me back to the window. Tom, teller of barnyard jokes. Deanna had found out he was now a negotiator of land rights for Indians in Alaska. Tom, married to a beauty queen, a woman who deserved him. The street was empty except for parked cars.
Another loud knock from the hall door preceded the upper half of my father, bending at the waist as though keeping his feet in the hall meant he wasn’t intruding. The organ music poured in, roaring. His face was red and his anger flooded the room like diesel exhaust. “We’re thirteen minutes behind! I’ve sent the groom and his men to the altar!” The room gasped in unison.
“She isn’t dressed, Daddy!” Olivia insisted and closed the door in his face. Mother rushed toward Olivia. “Please, Olivia, he’s just anxious.” My mother’s nose was shiny, her face tense with worry. This was the biggest operation for which The General had had responsibility since Korea. Here in the church were bridesmaids and groomsmen, all in uniform. But the operation was behind schedule. I realized I’d been gritting my teeth for some time.
A soft knock came from the adjoining door to the minister’s study, and white-haired Rev. Hough walked in, smiling and calm, not a bit deterred by a bride in her slip. “How’re y’all doing?” he asked, nodding around the room to each individual. “I guess Mr. Brady told you he sent the boys on down.”